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Title: The Young People's Wesley
Author: McDonald, W.
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Young People's Wesley" ***
[Illustration: John Wesley]
THE
Young People's Wesley
BY W. McDONALD
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY BISHOP W. F. MALLALIEU, D.D.
"The best of all is, God is with us."--_Wesley_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS
CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & PYE
1901
Copyright by
EATON & MAINS,
1901.
AFFECTIONATELY
Dedicated
TO
ALL THE MEMBERS OF JOHN WESLEY'S
WIDELY EXTENDED
AND CONSTANTLY INCREASING
PARISH.
PREFACE.
MY sole object in the preparation of this little volume has been to meet
what I regard as a real want--a Life of John Wesley which shall include
all the essential facts in his remarkable career, presented in such a
comprehensive form as to be quickly read and easily remembered by all;
not so expensive as to be beyond the reach of those of the most limited
means, and not so large as to require much time, even of the most busy
worker, to master its contents. I have sought to give my readers a
faithful view of the man--his origin, early life, conversion, marvelous
ministry, what he did, how he did it, the doctrines he preached, the
persecutions he encountered, and his triumphant end.
This revised and enlarged edition will be found to contain many
interesting features not found in the first edition. I have added, also,
a brief account of the introduction of Methodism into America, as well
as John Wesley's influence at the opening of the twentieth century. For
this interesting chapter I am indebted to Rev. W. H. Meredith, of the
New England Conference, who kindly consented to assist me, in view of
the pressure to get the manuscript ready on time.
It will appear, from all that has been said, that Mr. Wesley was the
most remarkable character of the last century; and the influence of his
life is more potent for good to-day than ever before, and must continue
to augment--if his followers are true to their trust--till the end of
time.
WILLIAM MCDONALD.
CONTENTS.
Page.
PREFACE, 5
INTRODUCTION, 9
CHAPTER.
I. BORN IN TROUBLOUS TIMES, 13
II. THE WESLEY FAMILY, 20
III. WESLEY'S EARLY LIFE, 32
IV. EPWORTH RAPPINGS, 41
V. ORIGIN OF THE HOLY CLUB, 49
VI. WESLEY IN AMERICA, 58
VII. WESLEY'S RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, 71
VIII. WESLEY'S MULTIPLIED LABORS, 83
IX. WESLEY'S DOMESTIC RELATIONS, 93
X. WESLEY'S PERSECUTIONS, 101
XI. WESLEY AND HIS THEOLOGY, 115
XII. WESLEY AS A MAN, 132
XIII. WESLEY AS A PREACHER, 136
XIV. WESLEY AS A REFORMER, 144
XV. WESLEY AND AMERICAN METHODISM PRIOR TO 1766, 153
XVI. WESLEY AND AMERICAN METHODISM, 161
XVII. WESLEY APPROACHING THE CLOSE OF LIFE, 173
XVIII. WESLEY AND HIS TRIUMPHANT DEATH, 179
XIX. WESLEY'S CHARACTER AS ESTIMATED BY UNBIASED JUDGES, 185
XX. THE GREATER WESLEY OF THE OPENING CENTURY, 193
CONCLUSION, 203
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PORTRAIT OF JOHN WESLEY, Frontispiece
FACING
PAGE
AN UNUSUAL VIEW OF THE EPWORTH RECTORY, 16
THE WESLEYAN MEMORIAL CHURCH, EPWORTH, ENGLAND, 32
JEFFREY'S ATTIC ROOM, WHENCE THE MYSTERIOUS NOISES CAME, 48
WESLEY'S ARMCHAIR, 64
WESLEY'S CLOCK, 96
SAMUEL WESLEY'S GRAVE, UPON WHICH JOHN PREACHED HIS FAMOUS
SERMON, 112
WESLEY'S TEAPOT. WESLEY'S BIBLE AND CASE, 144
ST. ANDREW'S CHURCH AT EPWORTH. EPWORTH MEMORIAL CHURCH
AT CLEVELAND, O., 160
THE ROOM IN WHICH WESLEY DIED, 176
JOHN WESLEY'S GRAVE, 192
INTRODUCTION.
WHAT, another Life of John Wesley! Why not? This time a "Young People's
Wesley." If ever the common people had an interest in any man, living or
dead, that man is John Wesley. It is true that we already have many
"Lives" of this remarkable man. They range from the massive volumes of
Tyerman down to the booklet of a few pages. The truth abides that of
making many books there is no end, and so more Lives of Wesley will be
written from time to time as the years and centuries come and go. The
reason of this is that John Wesley is one of the greatest men of all the
Christian centuries. When we undertake to enumerate the five greatest
men that the English race has ever produced we must of necessity include
the name of John Wesley. As the distance increases between the present
time and the days of his protracted activity the grander does he appear.
The majority of the men of his day and generation did not comprehend
him. They could not, for the plan of his aspirations and achievements
was far above their thinking or living. They did not realize his
greatness; they did not foresee the influence he was destined to exert
on all future generations. He has been dead more than a hundred years,
and yet to-day he is larger, vaster, and more powerful in the wide realm
of intellectual and spiritual activities than he was at any time during
his long and vigorous life. So far as we can judge, this development of
the stature of this wonderful man will continue for ages.
Remember that John Wesley was well bred. On both his father's and
mother's side he inherited the qualities of the best blood of England.
So far as we know, his ancestry was purely Saxon, and of the best type
of English-Saxon lineage. On sea or land, in military affairs, as a
diplomat or statesman, he would have been eminent. He was one of the
most thorough and comprehensive scholars of his century. He was fully
abreast of his times in all matters of natural science; he was a
linguist of rare excellency; he was a metaphysician; he was at home in
philosophy. He had the rare ability of using all he knew for the best
and highest purposes. He was a real genius, not a crank. A genius
utilizes environment; a genius dominates circumstances; a genius makes
old things new; a genius pioneers mankind in its career of progress.
Because of these qualities and characteristics, men will never tire of
reading the life, and men will never stop writing the life, of this
man. Born in the humble rectory of Epworth, in the midst of the fens of
Lincolnshire, his name and fame reach to the ends of the earth. Men know
him not for what he might have been, but for what he was--a friend of
all, and a prophet of God.
Just now when the common people are more and more educated, and nearly
all of them are readers of books, and many of them interested in good
books, it is important that we have a Life of Wesley that is perfectly
adapted to those who are not critical historical students, but rather to
those who want the gist of things, who want the substantial and
essential facts in compressed shape.
It is believed that this volume will meet all these requirements, and
that a careful perusal of its pages will put any person of ordinary
intelligence in very close touch with one of the greatest religious and
social reformers the world has ever known. This volume is one that might
be read with great profit by every member of our Church, and by all
Methodists everywhere. Especially would its reading help all our young
people, and particularly the members of our Epworth League. It is
certain that its reading would give them clear, definite, and correct
views of the life and work of the founder of Methodism; and such views
would be sure to lead to a more healthful and vigorous personal
religious experience, and would encourage all heroic aspirations for
the highest attainments in holy living, and excite the most ardent and
persistent efforts for the salvation of all men. John Wesley knew that
humanity had been redeemed by the sufferings and death of the Lord Jesus
Christ. He knew that every redeemed soul might be saved. He knew that it
was his business to bring redeemed humanity to the feet of its Redeemer.
Would that all his followers might share in this threefold knowledge;
and that by the reading of this volume all might be led to consecrate
themselves to the accomplishment of the supremely glorious task at which
John Wesley wrought until he ceased at once to work and live. O, that
all Methodists might follow John Wesley even as he followed Christ!
W. F. MALLALIEU.
Auburndale, Mass., April 8, 1901.
The Young People's Wesley.
CHAPTER I.
BORN IN TROUBLOUS TIMES.
DURING the latter part of the seventeenth and the first part of the
eighteenth century England was the theater of stirring events. War was
sounding its clarion notes through the land. Marlborough had achieved a
series of brilliant victories on the Continent, which had filled and
fired the national heart with the spirit of military glory.
The English, at that time, had an instinctive horror of popery and
power. James II, cruel, arbitrary, and oppressive, had been hurled from
the throne as a plotting papal tyrant, and his grandson, Charles Edward,
known as the Pretender, was making every possible effort to regain the
throne and to subject the people to absolute despotism. To add to their
dismay, the fleets of France and Spain were hovering along the English
coast, ready, at any favorable moment, to pounce upon her. The means of
public communication by railroad and telegraph were unknown. There were
few mails, and reliable information could not be readily or safely
obtained. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that strange
and exaggerated reports should have kept the public mind in a state of
great excitement and general consternation.
It was also, pre-eminently, an infidel age. Disrespect for the Bible and
the Christian religion prevailed among all classes. Hobbes, with his
scorpion tongue; Toland, with his papal-poisoned heart; Tindal, with his
infidel dagger concealed under a cloak of mingled popery and
Protestantism; Collins, with a heart full of deadly hate for
Christianity; Chubb, with his deistical insidiousness; and Shaftesbury,
with his platonic skepticism, hurled by wit and sarcasm--these, with
their corrupt associates, made that the infidel age of the world.
Christianity was everywhere held up to public reprobation and scorn.
It is true that Steele, Addison, Berkeley, Samuel Clarke, and Johnson
exposed the follies and sins of the times, but the character of these
efforts was generally more humorous and sarcastic than serious.
Occasionally they gave a sober rebuke of the religion of the day.
Berkeley attacked, with his keen logic and finished style, the skeptical
opinions which prevailed. Most of his articles were on the subject of
"Free Thinking." Johnson, the great moralist, stood up, it is said, "a
great giant to battle, with both hands against all error in religion,
whether in high places or low."
These men, and Young, with his vast religious pretentiousness, are said
to have walked in the garments of literary and social chastity; but
Swift, greater intellectually than any of them, and a high church
dignitary to boot, would have disgraced the license of the "Merry
Monarch's" court and outdone it in profanity. Even Dryden made the
literature of Charles II's age infamous for all time.
"Licentiousness was the open and shameless profession of the higher
classes in the days of Charles, and in the time of Anne it still
festered under the surface. Gambling was an almost universal practice
among men and women alike. Lords and ladies were skilled in knavery;
disgrace was not in cheating, but in being cheated. Both sexes were
given to profanity and drunkenness. Sarah Jennings, Duchess of
Marlborough, could swear more bravely than her husband could fight. The
wages of the poor were spent in guzzling beer, in wakes and fairs,
badger-baiting and cockfighting."[A] And yet the reign of Anne claims to
have been the golden age of English literature. It did show a polish on
the surface, but within it was "full of corruption and dead men's
bones."
[Illustration: AN UNUSUAL VIEW OF THE EPWORTH RECTORY.]
Added to this, the Church, which should have been the light of the
world, was in a most deplorable state. Irreligion and spiritual
indifference had taken possession of priest and people, and ministers
were sleeping over the threatened ruins of the Church, and, in too many
instances, were hastening, by their open infidelity, the day of its
ruin. The Established Church overtopped everything. She possessed great
power and little piety. Her sacerdotal robes had been substituted for
the garments of holiness; her Prayer Book had extinguished those
earnest, spontaneous soul-breathings which bring the burdened heart into
sympathetic union with the sympathizing Saviour. Spirituality had
well-nigh found a grave, from which it was feared there would be no
resurrection. Isaac Taylor says: "The Church had become an
ecclesiastical system, under which the people of England had lapsed into
heathenism;" and "Nonconformity had lapsed into indifference, and was
rapidly in a course to be found nowhere but in books." In France
hot-headed, rationalistic infidelity was invading the strongholds of the
Reformation, and French philosophers were spreading moral contagion
through Europe, which resulted in the French Revolution. The only thing
which saved England from the same catastrophe was the sudden rise of
Methodism, which, as one writer says, "laid hold of the lower classes
and converted them before they were ripe for explosion." When
preachers of the Gospel celebrated holy communion and preached to a
handful of hearers on Sabbath morning, and devoted the afternoon to
card-playing, and the rest of the week to hunting foxes, what else could
have been expected? It is doubtful if in any period of the history of
the Church the outlook had been darker.
The _North British Review_ says: "Never has a century risen on Christian
England so void of soul and faith; it rose a sunless dawn following a
dewless night. The Puritans were buried, and the Methodists were not
born." The Bishop of Lichfield said, in a sermon: "The Lord's day now is
the devil's market day. More lewdness, more drunkenness, more quarrels
and murders, more sin is conceived and committed, than on all the other
days of the week. Strong drink has become the epidemic distemper of the
city of London. Sin in general has become so hardened and rampant that
immoralities are defended, yea, justified, on principle. Every kind of
sin has found a writer to teach and vindicate it."
"The philosopher of the age was Bolingbroke; the moralist was Addison;
the minstrel was Pope; and the preacher was Atterbury. The world had an
idle, discontented look of a morning after some mad holiday."
Over this state of moral and religious apostasy a few were found who
made sad and bitter lamentations. Bishop Burnet was "filled with sad
thoughts." "The clergy," he said, "were under more contempt than those
of any other Church in Europe; for they were much more remiss in their
labors and least severe in their lives. I cannot look on," he says,
"without the deepest concern, when I see imminent ruin hanging over the
Church, and, by consequence, over the Reformation. The outward state of
things is black enough, God knows, but that which heightens my fears
arises chiefly from the inward state into which we are fallen."
Bishop Gibson gives a heart-saddening view of the matter: "Profaneness
and iniquity are grown bold and open." Bishop Butler declared the Church
to be "only a subject of mirth and ridicule." Guyes, a Nonconformist
divine, says that "preacher and people were content to lay Christ
aside." Hurrian, another Dissenter, sees "faith, joy, and Christian zeal
under a thick cloud." Bishop Taylor declares that "the spirit was
grieved and offended by the abominable corruption that abounded;" while
good Dr. Watts sings sadly of the "poor dying rate" at which the friends
of Jesus lived, saying: "I am well satisfied that the great and general
reason of this is the decay of vital religion in the hearts and lives of
men, and the little success that the administration of the Gospel has
made of late in the conversion of sinners to holiness."
This was the state of the English Church, and of Dissenters as well, at
the opening of the eighteenth century. And well it might be when, as has
been said, the philosopher of the age was Bolingbroke, the moralist was
Addison, the minstrel was Pope, and the preacher was Atterbury. But when
darkness seems most dense the day-star of hope is near to rising.
On the 17th of June, 1703, was born in the obscure parish at Epworth, of
Samuel and Susannah Wesley, John Wesley, the subject of this sketch. He
was one of nineteen children. The names of fifteen have been recorded;
the others, no doubt, died in infancy. Of these fifteen, John was the
twelfth. He was born in the third year of the eighteenth century. His
long life of eighty-eight years covered eleven of the twelve years of
Queen Anne's reign, thirteen of that of George I, thirty-three of George
II, and more than thirty of George III. This remarkable child was to
more than revive the dead embers of the Reformation; he was chosen of
God to inaugurate a spiritual movement which was to fill the world with
the spirit of holy being and doing, and bring to the people ransomed by
Jesus, in every clime and of every race, "freedom to worship God."
CHAPTER II.
THE WESLEY FAMILY.
SAMUEL WESLEY, father of John, was for forty years rector of Epworth
Parish. He was an honest, conscientious, stern old Englishman; a firmer
never clung to the mane of the British lion. He was the son of John
Wesley, a Dissenting minister, who enjoyed, for a time, all the rights
of churchmen. But, after the death of Cromwell, Charles II, whom the
Dissenters had aided in restoring to the throne, and who had promised
them toleration and liberty of conscience, on his return, finding the
Church party in the ascendency, violated his pledge and approved of the
most cruel and oppressive laws passed by Parliament against Dissenters.
By one of these inhuman acts more than two thousand ministers, and among
them many of the most pious, useful, learned, and conscientious in the
land, were deprived of their places in the Church, of their homes and
support, and were compelled to wander homeless and friendless, without
being allowed to remain anywhere, until they found rest in the grave.
"Stopping the mouths of these faithful men," says Dr. Adam Clarke, "was
a general curse to the nation. A torrent of iniquity, deep, rapid, and
strong, deluged the whole land, and swept away godliness and vital
religion from the kingdom. The king had no religion, either in power or
in form, though a papist at heart. He was the most worthless that ever
sat on a British throne, and profligate beyond all measure, without a
single good quality to redeem his numerous bad ones; and Church and
State joined hand in hand in persecution and intolerance. Since those
barbarous and iniquitous times, what hath God wrought!"[B]
Mr. Wesley had been for some years pastor of Whitchurch,
Dorchestershire, and was greatly beloved by his people. But the law
forbade anyone attending a place of worship conducted by Dissenters.
Whoever was found in such an assembly was tried by a judge without a
jury, and for the third offense was sentenced to transportation beyond
the seas for seven years; and if the offender returned to his home
before the seven years expired he was liable to capital punishment. This
was an example of refined cruelty. The minister who had grown gray in
the service of his Lord, whose annual income was barely sufficient to
meet the pressing needs of his family, was turned adrift upon the world
without support, and the poor man was not permitted to live within five
miles of his charge, nor of any other which he might have formerly
served. As Mr. Wesley could not teach, or preach, or hold private
meetings, he, for a time, turned his attention to the practice of
medicine for the support of his family.
He bade his weeping church adieu, and removed to Melcomb, a town some
twenty miles away. He had preached for a time in Melcomb before he
became vicar of Whitchurch, and hoped to find there a quiet retreat and
sympathizing friends. But his family was scarcely settled when an order
came prohibiting his settlement there, and fining a good lady twenty
pounds for receiving him into her house. Driven from Melcomb, he sought
shelter in Preston, by invitation of a kind friend, who offered him free
rent. Then came the passage of what was known as the "five-mile act,"
which required that Dissenting ministers should not reside within five
miles of an incorporated town. Preston, though not an incorporated town,
was within five miles of one. Finding no place for rest from the
relentless persecution of the Established Church--persecution as cruel
as Rome ever inflicted, save the death penalty, and that was imposed
under certain conditions--he concluded to leave his home for a time and
retire to some obscure village until he could, by prayer and
deliberation, determine what to do. Here, alone with God, his decision
was made. He fully decided that he could not, with a good conscience,
obey the law of Conformity, as it was called. Conformity was to him
apostasy.
Mr. Wesley determined to remove to some place in South America, and, if
not there, to Maryland. He hoped, by so doing, to find a quiet home for
himself and family. In Maryland, settled and ruled by Catholics, he
could enjoy freedom to worship God, but not in oppressive, Protestant
England, just rescued from the domination of Rome.
No one can adequately comprehend how such a removal would have affected
the religious life of the world. But the good man finally determined to
abandon his plan and remain in his native land and do the best he could.
God, without doubt, was in that decision. But he felt that God had
called him to preach, and preach he would.
In spite of every precaution, he was frequently interrupted, suffering
imprisonment for months together, and at four different times within a
few years. At last, by frequent imprisonment, poverty, and failing
health, the poor man's crushed spirit could stand it no longer, and he
died at the early age of forty-two years, leaving wife and children
homeless and helpless. All this the grandfather of John Wesley endured
for conscience' sake. He was a graduate of Oxford; as a classical
scholar he had few equals--a man of deep piety and distinguished
talents. His father, Bartholomew Wesley, had early dedicated his son to
the Gospel ministry, and God seems to have accepted the dedication. And
because he conscientiously objected to conducting public worship
strictly according to the Prayer Book, the unchristian laws regarding
Conformity were enforced, and the tears, blood, and suffering which
befell those godly men lay at the door of the Established Church. Cruel
persecution marked this man for its prey even after death. When his
inanimate body, followed by weeping wife, little children, and
sympathizing neighbors, was borne on a bier to the gates of the
consecrated burial place of Preston, the gates were closed against it by
order of the minister of the Established Church. So the remains of this
good and great man were deposited in an unknown and unmarked grave.
Samuel Wesley was sixteen years old at the time of his father's death.
He had been under the careful tuition of his learned father, and under
such training his mind had become highly educated for one of his years.
He had a genius for poetry, and possessed a highly sensitive nature. His
associations with Dissenters were not the most favorable, and what he
saw and heard at the meetings of what was known as the "Calf's Head
Club" disgusted him. Added to this, he was not pleased with the school
of the Dissenters in which he was being educated, and, being not a
little impulsive and hasty in his decisions, he concluded that all
Dissenters were of the same character. He determined to examine the
grounds of Dissent and Conformity, and, as might be expected, being more
or less controlled by youthful prejudice, he concluded to renounce his
former opinions and the faith of ancestors, and unite with the
Established Church. And, as is often the case in such sudden changes, he
did not stop until he had become a high churchman. But, notwithstanding
his change, he had too much good practical common sense to carry out his
theory. While it is true that he became a high Tory, he possessed too
much benevolence, and too nice a sense of right, to give countenance to
arbitrary power, such as had been exercised toward his ancestors. He
could not forget what his honored father had suffered at the hands of
churchmen.
Having become a churchman, at the age of sixteen he left his home for
Oxford University. He traveled all the distance on foot, with only about
thirteen dollars in his pocket and with no hopeful outlook for further
supplies. And from that time until he graduated he received from his
friends but a single crown ($1.20). But, Yankeelike, he made everything
turn to his advantage. Being a bright scholar, he composed college
exercises for those students who, it is said, "had more money than
brains;" he read over lessons for those who were too lazy to study, and
gave instruction to such as were dull of apprehension. He wrote also for
the press, and left the university, at the close, with four times as
much money as he had when he entered.
After his graduation he went to London and was ordained. He served one
year as curate in London, one year as chaplain on shipboard, and two
years more as curate in London.
When James II was expelled, and William and Mary were called to the
throne, Mr. Wesley was the first man to write in their defense. For this
timely support Queen Mary appointed him rector of Epworth, Lincolnshire,
which position he held to the end of his life. The village was far from
being attractive, and the people were generally hard cases; but he was a
faithful pastor there for forty years. He was always poor, but always
honest. He was frequently in jail for debt, and as often relieved by
donations from the Duke of Buckingham, the Archbishop of York, the
queen, and others. "No man," he says, "has worked truer for bread than I
have done, and no one has fared harder."
In politics Mr. Wesley was no conservative. Whatever he did, he did with
his might. He espoused the cause of William, Prince of Orange,
regarding him as a perfect antitype of Job's war horse, and for such
heroic support he received the anathemas of his parishioners; they
stabbed his cow, cut off his dog's legs, burned his flax, and twice
fired his house. But still he had the courage of his convictions. As an
example of his moral courage the following story is told of him: Mr.
Wesley was in a London coffee house taking refreshments. A colonel of
the guards, near by, was uttering fearful oaths. Wesley, a young man,
was greatly moved, and felt that a rebuke was demanded. He called the
waiter to bring him a glass of water. He did so, and in a loud, clear
voice Wesley said, "Carry this to that young man in the red coat, and
request him to wash his mouth after his oaths." The colonel heard him,
became much enraged, and made a bold attempt to rush upon his reprover.
His companion interfered, saying, "Nay, colonel, you gave the first
offense. You see, the gentleman is a clergyman." The colonel subsided,
but did not forget the reproof. Years after he met Mr. Wesley in St.
James Park, and said to him: "Since that time, sir, thank God! I have
feared an oath and everything that is offensive to the Divine Majesty. I
cannot refrain from expressing my gratitude to God and to you."
Samuel Wesley possessed many virtues, with some faults. He was often
impetuous, hasty, and sometimes rash. In the heat of controversy, in
which he at times engaged, he was often unsparing in his invectives. But
this must be set down, in part, to the spirit of the time. He was a
faithful pastor and a fine oriental scholar. Mr. Tyerman says, "He was
learned, laborious, and godly." He had the reputation of being a good
poet, a fair commentator, and an able miscellaneous writer.
SUSANNAH WESLEY.
Susannah Wesley, mother of John Wesley, was in most respects the perfect
antipode of her husband. She is said by some to have been beautiful, and
by all to have been devout, energetic, and intelligent. She had mastered
the Greek, Latin, and French languages, and was the mother of nineteen
children. And such a mother, for the careful, wise, religious training
of her children, modern times has never furnished a superior.
She was the daughter of Dr. Samuel Annesley, one of the many sufferers
under the cruel law of Nonconformity; but he does not seem to have
suffered as severely as John Wesley, whose fate we have recorded. It
must have been that he, for some cause, was more fortunate than his
contemporary. Miss Annesley became the wife of Samuel Wesley at the age
of nineteen years. It seems quite remarkable that Samuel Wesley and his
wife should have both been connected with Dissenters, and their
parents, on both sides, should have suffered by the oppression of the
Established Church, and that both of them, while young, should have left
the Dissenters and joined the Establishment. It could not have been the
result of careful investigation, but, more likely, of youthful
prejudice.
Mrs. Wesley was a noble woman. Of her Dr. Adam Clarke says: "Such a
woman, take her all in all, I have never read of, nor with her equal
have I been acquainted. Many daughters have done virtuously, but
Susannah Wesley has excelled them all." She was the sole instructor of
her numerous family, "and such a family," continues Dr. Clarke, "I have
never read of, heard of, or known; nor since the days of Abraham and
Sarah, Joseph and Mary of Nazareth, has there been a family to which the
human race has been more in debt."
Many have supposed that Samuel Wesley was a sour and disagreeable
husband. But he was one of the kindest of husbands, and his children are
said to have "idolized" him. His affection for his wife is seen in a
portrait he gives of her, a few years after their marriage, in his _Life
of Christ_, in verse:
"She graced my humble roof, and blest my life;
Blest me by a far greater name than wife;
Yet still I bore an undisputed sway,
Nor was't her task, but pleasure, to obey.
Scarce thought, much less could act what I denied,
In our lone home there was no room for pride.
Nor did I e'er direct what still was right;
She studied my convenience and delight;
Nor did I for her care ungrateful prove,
But only used my power to show my love.
Whate'er she asked I gave, without reproach or grudge,
For still she reason asked, and I was judge.
All my commands, requests at her fair hand,
And her requests to me were all commands.
To other households rarely she'd incline,
Her house her pleasure was, and she was mine.
Rarely abroad, or never but with me,
Or when by pity called, or charity."
Mrs. Wesley's attachment to her husband was undying. When some
disagreement occurred between her brother and her husband Mrs. Wesley
took the side of her husband, and wrote to her brother as follows: "I am
on the wrong side of fifty, infirm and weak, but, old as I am, since I
have taken my husband for better, for worse, I'll keep my residence with
him. Where he lives, I will live; where he dies, I will die, and there
will I be buried. God do unto me, and more also, if aught but death part
him and me."
In giving directions to her son John in regard to the right or wrong of
worldly pleasure she says: "Take this rule: Whatever weakens your
reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense
of God, or takes off the relish for spiritual things--in short,
whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your
mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself."
Did ever divine or philosopher state the question more clearly? Whoever
follows these directions will not err in regard to the question of
amusements.
Such a woman as this is worthy to be the mother of the founder of
Methodism, for had not Susannah Wesley been the mother of John Wesley it
is not likely that John Wesley would have been the founder of Methodism.
We shall have occasion to speak of this woman and her husband further
on.
CHAPTER III.
WESLEY'S EARLY LIFE.
DURING the first eleven years of Wesley's life two events occurred
worthy of note. At the age of five he was rescued from the burning
parsonage almost by miracle. On a winter night, February 9, 1709, while
all the family were wrapped in slumber, the cry of "Fire! fire!" was
heard on the street. The rector was suddenly awakened, and, though half
naked, sought to arouse his family. He rushed to the chamber, called the
nurse and the children, and bade them "rise quickly and shift for
themselves." After great effort they succeeded in making their escape
from the burning house. They are all safe except "Jack." He had not been
seen by anyone. In a few moments his voice was heard, crying for help.
The flames were everywhere. The father, greatly excited, attempted to
rush upstairs, but the flames drove him back. He fell on his knees and
commended the soul of his boy to God.
[Illustration: THE WESLEYAN MEMORIAL CHURCH, EPWORTH, ENGLAND.]
While the father was on his knees the boy had mounted a trunk and called
from the window. There was no time for ladders, for the house was
nigh to falling. One cried, "Come here! I will stand against the wall,
and you mount my shoulders quickly." In a moment it was done, and the
child was pulled through the casement, and the next moment the walls
fell--inward, through mercy--and the child, as well as the one who
rescued him, was saved. His father received him as "a brand plucked from
the burning," and in the joy of his heart cried out: "Come, neighbors,
let us kneel down, and give thanks to God! He has given me all my
children. Let the house go; I am rich enough."
There is no doubt but that some of his dastardly parishioners fired his
house, and now house, books, furniture, manuscripts, and clothing were
all gone. But this foul act made him many friends. A new house was
built, but it was many years before he recovered from the loss, if,
indeed, he ever did.
John's wonderful escape deeply impressed his mother that God intended
him for some work of special importance in the history of the Church and
the world, and she felt that she ought to devote special attention to
him and train him for God.
At eight years of age John contracted that most dreaded disease,
smallpox. His father was from home at the time. Mrs. Wesley, writing,
says: "Jack has borne his disease bravely, like a man--and, indeed, like
a Christian--without any complaint; though he seems angry at the
smallpox when they are sore, as we guess by his looking sourly at them;
for he never says anything." Brave boy!
CHARTERHOUSE SCHOOL.
Passing from the watchful eye of his father and the tender, loving, and
almost unexampled care and instruction of his mother, he entered, at
about the age of eleven, the famous Charterhouse School, London. This
was built originally for a monastery. It was purchased by Thomas Sutton,
Esq., and under a charter from King James he established a school for
the young. In this school forty-four boys, between the ages of ten and
fifteen, were gratuitously fed, clothed, and instructed in the classics.
Here such notables as Addison, Steele, Blackstone, Isaac Barrows, and
others were educated.
Young Wesley was largely aided in securing this position by the Duke of
Buckingham, who seems to have been a fast friend of the family. He
secured for him a scholarship, which gave him about two hundred dollars
a year. By the direction of his father he ran around the playgrounds
three times every morning for the benefit of his health. It was a school
of trial. Being a charity scholar, he did not escape the taunts of his
fellow-students more highly favored than he; but he bore all with
meekness, patiently suffering wrongfully. He remained there some six
years, and, though a mere youth, he distinguished himself in every
branch of scholarship to which he turned his attention.
Mr. Tyerman, who seems to have searched for every spot on this rising
sun, is bold to say that Wesley "lost the religion which had marked his
character from the days of his infancy. He entered the Charterhouse a
saint, and left it a sinner." We cannot find this marked change on the
record with the clearness with which it appears to Mr. Tyerman. There is
no evidence that Wesley had ever known the converting grace of God up to
this time, and, if not, we are unable to see how he could have lost it.
That he was a sinner at this time there can be no doubt. But, while he
confesses that he was a sinner, he declares that his "sins were not
scandalous in the eyes of the world." Instead of being the wicked boy
that Mr. Tyerman represents him to have been, he declares: "I still read
the Scriptures, and said my prayers morning and evening. And what I now
hoped to be saved by was: (1) Not being as bad as other people; (2)
Having still a kindness for religion; and (3) Reading my Bible, going to
church, and saying my prayers." Should an unconverted young man in these
times, in passing through our high schools or seminaries, give evidence
that he read his Bible, prayed morning and evening, attended church
regularly, joined in all the devotions, went to the sacrament, and
manifested a kindness for religion, who would say that "he entered the
school a saint, and left it a sinner"? There is no evidence that Wesley,
during his six years' course at the Charterhouse, ever contracted
vicious habits or became a flagrant sinner. The wonder is that, with
such corrupt and corrupting influences surrounding him, he had not been
morally ruined.
CHRIST COLLEGE.
At the age of seventeen he entered Christ College, Oxford, one of the
noblest colleges of that famous seat of learning, where he remained five
years, under the care of Dr. Wigon, a gentleman of fine classical
attainments. His excellent standing at the Charterhouse gave him a high
position at Oxford. His means of support were very limited. His mother
laments their inability to assist him. In a letter to him she says:
DEAR JACK: I am uneasy because I have not heard from
you. If all things fail, I hope God will not forsake
us. We have still his good providence to depend on.
Dear Jack, be not discouraged. Do your duty. Keep
close to your studies, and hope for better days.
Perhaps, after all, we shall pick up a few crumbs for
you before the end of the year. Dear Jack, I beseech
Almighty God to bless thee.
SUSANNAH WESLEY.
This indicates the great financial embarrassment in which they were
often found, as well as their abiding trust in God.
His mother seems deeply concerned for his religious life. She writes,
"Now in good earnest resolve to make religion the business of life; for,
after all, that is the one thing that, strictly speaking, is necessary.
All things besides are comparatively little to the purposes of life. I
heartily wish you would now enter upon a strict examination of yourself,
that you may know whether you have a reasonable hope of salvation by
Jesus Christ. If you have it, the satisfaction of knowing it will
abundantly reward your pains; if you have it not, you will find a more
reasonable occasion for tears than can be met with in any tragedy."
His brother Samuel writes hopefully to his father: "My brother Jack, I
can faithfully assure you, gives you no manner of discouragement from
believing your third son a scholar. Jack is a brave boy, learning Hebrew
as fast as he can."
At the age of twenty-one, while yet a student at Oxford, "he appears,"
says a writer of the time, "the very sensible and acute collegian; a
young fellow of the finest classical taste, of the most liberal and
manly sentiments." Alexander Knox says: "His countenance, as well as his
conversation, expressed an habitual gayety of heart, which nothing but
conscious innocence and virtue could have bestowed." Then, referring to
him in more advanced life, he says: "He was, in truth, the most perfect
specimen of moral happiness I ever saw; and my acquaintance with him has
done more to teach me what a heaven upon earth is implied in the
maturity of Christian piety than all I have elsewhere seen or heard or
read, except in the sacred volume." "Strange," says another writer,
"that such a man should have become a target for poisoned arrows,
discharged, not by the hands of mad-cap students only, but by college
dignitaries, by men solemnly pledged to the work of Christian
education!"
About this time Wesley became Fellow of Lincoln College, and his brother
Charles, who was five years younger, became a student of Christ Church
College. He had prepared for college at Westminster grammar school, and
was a "gay young fellow, with more genius than grace," loving pleasure
more than piety. When John sought to revive the "fireside devotion" of
the Epworth home he rejoined, with some degree of earnestness, "What!
would you have me be a saint all at once?"
In September of 1725 John was ordained deacon by Bishop Potter, and in
March of the following year was elected Fellow of Lincoln College, with
which his aged father seems to have been greatly delighted, saying,
"Wherever I am, Jack is Fellow of Lincoln!"
HIS FATHER'S CURATE.
His father's health failing, John was urged to become his curate. He
responded to his father's request, but does not seem to have had a very
high appreciation of his father's flock, for he describes them as
"unpolished wights, as dull as asses and impervious as stones." But for
about two years he hammers away, preaching the law as he then understood
it, confessing that "he saw no fruit for his labor."
He then returned to Oxford as Greek lecturer, devoting himself to the
study of logic, ethics, natural philosophy, oratory, Hebrew, and Arabic.
He perfected himself in French, and spoke and wrote Latin with
remarkable purity and correctness. He gave considerable attention to
medicine. In this way Providence was fitting him for the great work of
which he was to be the God-ordained leader. About the time that Wesley
entered upon his ministry, by episcopal ordination, and commenced his
lifework, Voltaire was expelled from France and fled to England. During
a long life he and Wesley were contemporaries. Mr. Tyerman gives a
graphic description of these two remarkable men. "Perhaps of all the men
then living," he says, "none exercised so great an influence as the
restless philosopher and the unwearied minister of Christ. Wesley, in
person, was beautiful; Voltaire was of a physiognomy so strange, and
lighted up with fire so half-hellish and half-heavenly, that it was hard
to say whether it was the face of a satyr or man. Wesley's heart was
filled with a world-wide benevolence; Voltaire, though of a gigantic
mind, scarcely had a heart at all--an incarnation of avaricious
meanness, and a victim to petty passions. Wesley was the friend of all
and the enemy of none; Voltaire was too selfish to love, and when forced
to pay the scanty and ill-tempered homage which he sometimes rendered it
was always offered at the shrine of rank and wealth. Wesley had myriads
who loved him; Voltaire had numerous admirers, but probably not a
friend. Both were men of ceaseless labor, and almost unequaled authors;
but while the one filled the land with blessings, the other, by his
sneering and mendacious attacks against revealed religion, inflicted a
greater curse than has been inflicted by the writings of any other
author either before or since. The evangelist is now esteemed by all
whose good opinions are worth having; the philosopher is only remembered
to be branded with well-merited reproach and shame." Voltaire ended his
life as a fool by taking opium, while Wesley ends his life in holy
triumph, exclaiming, "The best of all is, God is with us."
CHAPTER IV.
THE EPWORTH RAPPINGS.
IT does not seem as if a Life of John Wesley would be complete without
an account of what was known as the "Epworth rappings," which occurred
in the home of Samuel Wesley in 1716, while John was at the Charterhouse
School, London. They occasioned no little speculation among philosophers
and doubters in general, not only at the time they occurred, but down to
the present day. A brief description of these strange noises, and how
they were regarded at the time, may be proper in this place.
On the night of December 2, 1716, Robert Brown, Mr. Wesley's servant,
and one of the maids of the family were alone in the dining room. About
ten o'clock they heard a strong knocking on the outside of the door
which opened into the garden. They answered the call, but no one was
there. A second knock was heard, accompanied by a groan. The door was
again and again opened, as the knocks were repeated, with the same
result. Being startled, they retired for the night.
As Mr. Brown reached the top of the stairs a hand mill, at a little
distance, was seen whirling with great velocity. On seeing the strange
sight he seemed only to regret that it was not full of malt. Strange
noises were heard in and about the room during the night. These were
related to another maid in the morning, only to be met with a laugh,
and, "What a pack of fools you are!" This was the beginning of these
strange noises in the Epworth parsonage.
Subsequently, knocking was heard on the doors, on the bedstead, and at
various times in all parts of the house.
Susannah and Ann were one evening below stairs in the dining room and
heard knockings at the door and overhead. The next night, while in their
chamber, they heard knockings under their feet, while no person was in
the chamber at the time, nor in the room below. Knockings were heard at
the foot of the bed and behind it.
Mr. Wesley says that, on the night of the 21st of December, "I was
wakened, a little before one o'clock, by nine distinct and very loud
knocks, which seemed to be in the next room to ours, with a short pause
at every third knock." The next night Emily heard knocks on the bedstead
and under the bed. She knocked, and it answered her. "I went down
stairs," says Mr. Wesley, "and knocked with my stick against the joists
of the kitchen. It answered me as loud and as often as I knocked."
Knockings were heard under the table; latches of doors were moved up and
down as the members of the family approached them. Doors were violently
thrust against those who attempted to open or shut them.
When prayer was offered in the evening, by the rector, for the king, a
knocking began all around the room, and a thundering knock at the
_amen_. This was repeated at morning and evening, when prayer was
offered for the king. Mr. Wesley says, "I have been thrice pushed by an
invisible power, once against the corner of my desk in my study, and a
second time against the door of the matted chamber, and a third time
against the right side of the frame of my study door, as I was going
in."
Mr. Poole, the vicar of Haxey, an eminently pious and sensible man, was
sent for to spend the night with the family. The knocking commenced
about ten o'clock in the evening. Mr. Wesley and his brother clergyman
went into the nursery, where the knockings were heard. Mr. Wesley
observed that the children, though asleep, were very much affected; they
trembled exceedingly and sweat profusely; and, becoming very much
excited, he pulled out a pistol and was about to fire it at the place
from whence the sound came. Mr. Poole caught his arm and said: "Sir, you
are convinced that this is something preternatural. If so, you cannot
hurt it, but you give it power to hurt you." Then going close to the
place, Mr. Wesley said: "Thou deaf and dumb devil, why dost thou
frighten these children, who cannot answer for themselves? Come to me in
my study, who am a man." Instantly the particular knock which the rector
always gave at the gate was given, as if it would shiver the board in
pieces. The next evening, on entering his study, of which no one but
himself had the key, the door was thrust against him with such force as
nearly to throw him down.
A sound was heard as if a large iron bell was thrown among bottles under
the stairs; and as Mr. and Mrs. Wesley were going down stairs they heard
a sound as if a vessel of silver were poured upon Mrs. Wesley's breast
and ran jingling down to her feet; and at another time a noise as if all
the pewter were thrown about the kitchen. But on examination all was
found undisturbed.
The dog, a large mastiff, seemed as much disturbed by these noises as
the family. On their approach he would run to Mr. and Mrs. Wesley,
seeking shelter between them. While the disturbances continued the dog
would bark and leap, and snap on one side and on the other, and that
frequently before any person in the room heard any noise at all. But
after two or three days he used to tremble and creep away before the
noise began; and by this the family knew of its approach. Footsteps
were heard in all parts of the house, from cellar to garret. Groans and
every sort of noise were heard all over the house too numerous to
relate. Whenever it was attributed to rats and mice the noises would
become louder and fiercer.
These disturbances continued for some four months and then subsided,
except that some members of the family were annoyed by them for several
years.
Mr. Wesley was frequently urged to quit the parsonage. His reply was
eminently characteristic: "No," said he, "let the devil flee from me. I
will never flee from the devil."
Every effort was made to discover the cause of these disturbances, but
without satisfactory results, save that all believed they were
preternatural. The whole family were unanimous in the belief that it was
satanic.
A full account of these noises was prepared from the most authentic
sources by John Wesley and published in the _Arminian Magazine_. Dr.
Priestley, an unbeliever, confessed it to have been the
best-authenticated and best-told story of the kind that was anywhere
extant; and yet, so strongly wedded was he to his materialistic views,
he could not accept them, nor find what might be regarded as a
commonsense solution of them. He thought it quite probable that it was a
trick of the servants, assisted by some of the neighbors, and that
nothing was meant by it except puzzling the family and amusing
themselves. But Mrs. Wesley and other members of the household declared
that the noises were heard above and beneath them when all the family
were in the same room.
Dr. Southey, though he does not express an opinion of these noises in
his _Life of Wesley_, in a letter to Mr. Wilberforce avows his belief in
their preternatural character. In his _Life of Wesley_ he does say, "The
testimony upon which it rests is far too strong to be set aside because
of the strangeness of the relation."
Dr. Priestley observes in favor of the story that all the parties seemed
to have been sufficiently void of fear, and also free from credulity,
except the general belief that such things were supernatural. But he
claims that "where no good end is answered we may safely conclude that
no miracle was wrought."
Mr. Southey replies to Priestley thus: "The former argument would be
valid if the term 'miracle' were applicable to the case; but by
'miracle' Mr. Priestley intends a manifestation of divine power, and in
the present case no such meaning is supposed, any more than in the
appearance of departed spirits. Such things may be preternatural and yet
not miraculous; they may be in the ordinary course of nature, and yet
imply no alteration of its laws. And in regard to the good end which it
may be supposed to answer, it would be end sufficient if sometimes one
of those unhappy persons, who, looking through the dim glass of
infidelity, sees something beyond this life and the narrow sphere of
mortal existence, should, from the well-established truth of such a
story (trifling and objectless as it may appear), be led to conclude
that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in
their philosophy."[C]
Mr. Coleridge finds a satisfactory solution of this knotty question in
attributing the whole thing to "a contagious nervous disease" with which
he judged the whole family to have been afflicted, "the acme or
intensest form of which is catalepsy." The poor dog, it would seem, was
as badly afflicted as the rest.
This notion does not need refutation. Dr. Adam Clarke, who collected all
the accounts of these disturbances and published them in his _Wesley
Family_, claims that they are so circumstantial and authentic as to
entitle them to the most implicit credit. The eye and ear witnesses were
persons of strong understanding and well-cultivated minds, untinctured
by superstition, and in some instances rather skeptically inclined.
[Illustration: JEFFREY'S ATTIC ROOM, WHENCE THE MYSTERIOUS NOISES CAME.]
These unexplained noises in the Epworth rectory found their counterpart
in what was known a little earlier as "New England witchcraft," and in
our times as the Rochester and Hidsville knockings in 1848, which have
ripened into modern Spiritualism, which, if real, is satanic.
There is but little doubt that these remarkable occurrences at his
Epworth home made a deep and lasting impression on John Wesley's mind
and life. There was ever present to his mind the reality of an invisible
world, and he was convinced that satanic as well as angelic forces were
all about us, both to bless and to ruin us if permitted to do so by Him
who rules all the world.
CHAPTER V.
ORIGIN OF THE HOLY CLUB.
IT was while he was a member of Lincoln College that that unparalleled
religious career of Mr. Wesley, which has always been regarded as the
most wonderful movement of modern times, began. "Whoever studies the
simplicity of its beginning, the rapidity of its growth, the stability
of its institutions, its present vitality and activity, its commanding
position and prospective greatness, must confess the work to be not of
man, but of God."
The heart of the youthful collegian was profoundly stirred by the
reading of the _Christian Pattern_, by Thomas à Kempis, and _Holy Living
and Dying_ by Jeremy Taylor. He learned from the former "that simplicity
of intention and purity of affection were the wings of the soul, without
which he could never ascend to God;" and on reading the latter he
instantly resolved to dedicate all his life to God. He was convinced
that there was no medium; every part must be a sacrifice to either God
or himself. From this time his whole life was changed. How much he owed
under God to these two works eternity alone will reveal. Law's _Call_
and _Perfection_ greatly aided him.
A little band was formed of such as professed to seek for all the mind
of Christ. They commenced with four; soon their number increased to six,
then to eight, and so on. Their object was purely mutual profit. They
read the classics on week days and divinity on the Sabbath. They prayed,
fasted, visited the sick, the poor, the imprisoned. They were near to
administer religious consolation to criminals in the hour of their
execution. The names of these remarkable religious reformers were: John
and Charles Wesley, Robert Kirkham, William Morgan, George Whitefield,
John Clayton, T. Broughton, B. Ingham, J. Harvey, J. Whitelamb, W. Hall,
J. Gambold, C. Kinchin, W. Smith, Richard Hutchins, Christopher
Atkinson, and Messrs. Salmon, Morgan, Boyce, and others.
As might have been expected, they were ridiculed and lampooned by those
who differed from them, and who could not comprehend the motive to such
a religious life. They were called in derision "Sacramentarians," "Bible
Bigots," "Bible Moths," "The Holy Club," "The Godly Club,"
"Supererogation Men," and finally "Methodists." Their strict, methodical
lives in the arrangement of their studies and the improvement of their
time, their serious deportment and close attention to religious duties,
caused a jovial friend of Charles Wesley to say, "Why, here is a new
sect of Methodists springing up!" alluding to an ancient school of
physicians, or to a class of Nonconforming ministers of the seventeenth
century, or to both, who received this title from some things common to
each. The name took, and the young men were known throughout the
university as the Methodists. The name thus given in derision was
finally accepted, and has been retained in honor to this day by the
followers of Wesley.
A writer in one of the most respectable journals of the day, in
describing these inoffensive men, employed the most unwarrantable
language. It was affirmed that they had a near affinity to the Essenes
among the Jews, and to the Pietists of Switzerland; they excluded what
was absolutely necessary to the support of life; they afflicted their
bodies; they let blood once a fortnight to keep down the carnal man;
they allowed none to have any religion but those of their own sect,
while they themselves were farthest from it. They were hypocrites, and
were supposed to use religion only as a veil to vice; and their greatest
friends were ashamed to stand in their defense. They were enthusiasts,
madmen, fools, and zealots. They pretended to be more pious than their
neighbors. These were but the beginning of sorrows, as we shall see
later.
Wesley says: "Ill men say all manner of evil of me, and good men believe
them. There is a way, and there is but one, of making my peace. God
forbid I should ever take it."
"As for reputation," he says, "though it be a glorious instrument of
advancing our Master's service, yet there is a better than that--a clean
heart, a single eye, a soul full of God." What words are these for a
minister of the Lord Jesus! It implies heroic, unselfish devotion to a
glorious object. He had discovered the secret of success.
What golden words are these: "I once desired to make a fair show in
language and philosophy. But that is past. There is a more excellent
way; and if I cannot attain to any progress in one without throwing up
all thoughts of the other, why, fare it well." This gives the reader an
idea of the motive which governed him to the end of life.
In the midst of these scenes of persecution Wesley addressed a letter to
his venerable father, still living at Epworth, asking his advice. The
old man urged him to go on and not be weary in well-doing; "to bear no
more sail than necessary, but to steer steady. As they had called his
son the father of the Holy Club, they might call him the grandfather,
and he would glory in that name rather than in the title of His
Holiness." These were noble words from sire to son at such a time and in
such a conflict.
In years after, when looking back upon the scenes of Oxford and that
mustard-seed beginning, Wesley said: "Two young men, without name,
without friends, without either power or fortune, set out from college
with principles totally different from those of the common people, to
oppose all the world, learned and unlearned, to combat popular
prejudices of every kind. Their first principle directly attacked all
wickedness; their second, all the bigotry in the world. Thus they
attempted a reformation not of opinions (feathers, trifles not worth
naming), but of men's tempers and lives; of vice of every kind; of
everything contrary to justice, mercy, or truth. And for this it was
that they carried their lives in their hands, and that both the great
vulgar and the small looked upon them as mad dogs, and treated them as
such." Such was the beginning of the religious career of this wonderful
man. Wesley refers to three distinct periods of the rise of Methodism.
He says: "The first rise of Methodism was in November, 1729, when four
of us met at Oxford. The second was at Savannah, in April, 1736, when
twenty or thirty persons met at my house. The last was at London, May 1,
1738, when forty or fifty of us agreed to meet together every Wednesday
evening, in order to free conversation, begun and ended with singing and
prayer. God then thrust us out to raise a holy people."
It would be interesting to follow these men and learn the results of
their lives; but our space does not permit. We refer the reader to that
most excellent work, _The Oxford Methodists_, by Tyerman. Of Robert
Kirkham little or nothing is known. William Morgan died while a mere
youth, and died well. John Clayton became a Jacobite Churchman, and
treated Wesley and his brother Charles with utter contempt. Thomas
Broughton became secretary of the "Society for the Promotion of
Christian Knowledge," and was faithful to his trust till death. He died
suddenly upon his knees, on a Sabbath morning just before he was to have
preached. James Harvey, author of _Meditations_, was a man of beautiful
character, but opposed Wesley's Arminian views. Charles Kinchin, unlike
most of the "Holy Club," remained the fast friend of Wesley until death.
John Whitelamb married John Wesley's sister Mary, who died within one
year, leaving her husband broken-hearted and despondent. He seems to
have lost much of his early devotion, causing Mr. Wesley to say, "O, why
did he not die forty years ago?" Wesley Hall married John Wesley's
sister Martha, a lady of superior talents and sweetness of disposition.
Wesley regarded Hall as a man "holy and unblamable in all manner of
conversation." After some years Hall went to the bad. He became, first,
a Dissenter, then a Universalist, then a deist, after that a polygamist.
He abandoned his charming wife, nine of his ten children having died,
and the tenth soon followed. He went to the West Indies with one of his
concubines, living there until her death. Broken in health and awakened
to his terrible condition, he returned to England, where he soon after
died. His lawful and faithful wife, hearing of his condition, like an
angel of mercy hastened to his bedside. He died in great sorrow of
heart, saying--and they were his last words--"I have injured an angel,
an angel that never reproached me." Wesley says: "I trust he died in
peace, for God gave him deep repentance." John Gambold became a Moravian
bishop, and was so opposed to Wesley that he frankly told him he was
"ashamed to be seen in his company." Wesley, however, always held him in
high esteem. Of Richard Hutchins little is known, except that he was
rector of Lincoln College, and never seems to have opposed the Wesleys.
Christopher Atkinson was for twenty-five years vicar of Shorp-Arch and
Walton. His last words were, "Come, Lord Jesus, and come quickly."
Charles Delamotte was one who accompanied the Wesleys to Georgia. Little
further is known of him, except that he became a Moravian and died in
peace at Barrow upon the Humber.
Here ends our account of the "Holy Club." All of them maintained a
correct life except Hall. They were nearly all Calvinists, and in this
they came in conflict with Wesley. Had they remained with Wesley, what a
record they might have made! We trust their end was peace.
A TRIUMPHANT DEATH SCENE.
Go with me to the Epworth rectory. The venerable Samuel Wesley is dying;
no, not dying, but languishing into life. John and Charles have been
summoned from Oxford, and they are at the bedside. The faithful wife is
so overcome that she cannot be present to witness the dying scene.
John sympathetically inquires, "Do you suffer much, father?" The dying
man responds, "Yes, but nothing is too much to suffer for heaven. The
weaker I am in body the stronger and more sensible support I feel from
God." The dying saint lays his trembling hand on the head of Charles,
and, like a true prophet, says, "Be steady! The Christian faith will
surely revive in this kingdom. You shall see it, though I shall not."
John inquires again, "Are you near heaven?" The dying rector joyfully
responds, "Yes, I am." "Are all the consolations of God small with you,
father?" The emphatic answer is, "No! no! no!"
He then called his children each by name, and said to them, "Think of
heaven; talk of heaven! All the time is lost when we are not thinking of
heaven." The hour came for his departure. The children knelt beside his
bed; John prayed. As the prayer ended, in a feeble whisper the rector
said, "Now you have done all." Again John prayed, commending the soul of
his honored father to God. All was silent as the tomb. They opened their
eyes, and the rector was with the Lord, "beholding the King in his
beauty." "Can anything on earth be more beautiful," says one writer,
"than such a death? It was indeed fitting that this tried, scarred
Christian warrior should pass thus peacefully to his reward."
"Now," said his widow, in great sorrow, "I am appeased in his having so
easy a death, and I am strengthened to bear it."
On the very day of the rector's funeral a heartless parishioner, to whom
the rector owed seventy-five dollars, seized the widow's cattle to
secure the debt. But it was such a deed as his godless people were ever
ready to perpetrate. John came to the relief of his poor mother, and
gave the woman his note for the amount.
Wesley is again at Oxford, intent on service for his Lord.
CHAPTER VI.
WESLEY IN AMERICA.
ONE of the most remarkable chapters in the life of John Wesley relates
to his mission to America.
There was a tract of land in North America, lying between South Carolina
and Florida, over which the English held a nominal jurisdiction. It was
a wild, unexplored wilderness, inhabited only by Indian tribes. Under
the sanction of a royal charter in 1732 a settlement was made in this
territory, and as a compliment to the king, George II, it was named
Georgia.
The object of such a settlement was twofold: first, to supply an outlet
for the redundant population of the English metropolis; and, secondly,
to furnish a safe asylum for foreign Protestants who were the subjects
of popish intolerance. No Roman Catholic could find a home there. James
Edward Oglethorpe, an earnest friend of humanity, was appointed the
first governor of the territory, and he and twenty others were named as
trustees, to hold the territory twenty years in trust for the poor.
The first company of emigrants, one hundred and twenty-four in number,
had already landed at Savannah and were breathing its balmy air, and the
enthusiastic governor was on his return to inspire in the mind of the
English people increased confidence in the new enterprise.
Having long been a personal friend of the Wesley family, Oglethorpe knew
well the sterling worth of the two brothers, John and Charles, who were
still at Oxford. An application was made to some of the Oxford
Methodists to settle in the new colony as clergymen. Such sacrifices as
they were ready to endure, and such a spirit as seemed to inflame them,
were regarded as excellent qualities for the hardships of such a country
as Georgia. Mr. Wesley was earnestly pressed by no less a person than
the famous Dr. Burton to undertake a mission to the Indians of Georgia,
Dr. Burton telling him that "plausible and popular doctors of divinity
were not the men wanted in Georgia," but men "inured to contempt of the
ornaments and conveniences of life, to bodily austerities, and to
serious thoughts." He finally consented, his brother Charles, Benjamin
Ingham, and Charles Delamotte joining him.
When the project was made public it was regarded by many as a Quixotic
scheme. One inquired of John: "Do you intend to become a knight-errant?
How did Quixotism get into your head? You want nothing. You have a good
provision for life. You are in a fair way for promotion, and yet you are
leaving all to fight windmills."
"Sir," replied Mr. Wesley, "if the Bible be not true, I am as very a
fool and madman as you can conceive. But if that book be of God, I am
sober-minded; for it declares, 'There is no man that hath left houses,
and friends, and brethren for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not
receive manifold in this present time, and in the world to come
everlasting life.'"
He submitted his plans to his widowed mother, asking her advice. She
replied, "Had I twenty sons, I should rejoice to see them all so
employed." His sister Emily said, "Go, my brother;" and his brother
Samuel joined with his mother and sister in bidding him Godspeed.
All things being in readiness, on the 14th of October, 1735, the company
embarked on board the _Simmonds_, off Gravesend, and after a few days'
detention set sail for the New World.
This was a voyage of discovery--the discovery of holiness.
"Our end in leaving our native land," Wesley says, "was not to avoid
want, God having given us plenty of temporal blessings; nor to gain the
dung and dross of riches and honor; but simply to save our souls, to
live wholly to the glory of God."
Wesley hoped by subjecting himself to the hardships of such a life to
secure that holiness for which his soul so ardently longed. He had no
clear conception as yet of the doctrine of salvation by faith alone. He
hoped by spending his life among rude savages to escape the temptations
of the great metropolis. In the wilds of America he could live on "water
and bread and the fruits of the earth," and speak "without giving
offense." He justly concluded that "pomp and show of the world had no
place in the wilds of America." "An Indian hut offered no food for
curiosity." "My chief motive," he says, "is the hope of saving my own
soul. I hope to learn the true sense of the Gospel of Christ by
preaching it to the heathen." "I cannot hope to attain the same degree
of holiness here which I do there." "I hope," he continues, "from the
moment I leave the English shore, under the acknowledged character of a
teacher sent from God, there shall be no word heard from my lips but
what properly flows from that character."
But Wesley could not get away from himself. The greatest hindrance to
holiness was in his own heart. He had looked for holiness in works,
sacrifices, austerities, etc., but had failed to see that it was by
faith alone.
The voyage, though of almost unparalleled roughness, was of infinite
profit to Wesley. A company of Moravians, with David Nitschmann as their
bishop, were passengers, bound to the New World, fleeing from popish
persecutions. Wesley, observing their behavior in the midst of great
peril, was convinced that they were in possession of that to which he
was a stranger. Ingham represented them as "a heavenly minded people."
Fifty-seven days of sea life brought them within sight of the beautiful
Savannah. Soon they were kneeling upon its soil, thanking God for his
merciful care and providential deliverance.
An event occurred on the voyage to Georgia illustrating Wesley's
character. General Oglethorpe had become offended at his Italian
servant. Hearing a disturbance in the cabin, Wesley stepped in. The
general, observing him, and being in a high temper, sought to apologize.
"You must excuse me, Mr. Wesley," he said; "I have met with a
provocation too great for a man to bear. You know I drink nothing but
Cyprus wine. I provided myself with several dozens of it, and this
villain, Grimaldi, has drank nearly the whole lot of it. I will be
avenged. He shall be tied hand and foot, and carried to the man-of-war.
[A man-of-war accompanied the expedition for protection.] The rascal
should have taken care how he used me so, for I never forgive." Wesley,
fixing his eye upon the general--an eye that seemed to penetrate his
soul--said, "Then I hope, general, you never sin!"
The general's heart was touched, his conscience smitten. He stood
speechless before the youthful evangelist for a moment, and then threw
his bunch of keys on the floor before his poor, cringing servant,
saying, "There, villain, take my keys; and behave better in the future."
Wesley, it seems, had the moral courage, which probably no other man
possessed on that ship, to reprove General Oglethorpe to his face.
Soon after landing in Georgia, Wesley met Spangenberg, the Moravian
elder, and desired to know of him how he should prosecute his new
enterprise. The devout man of God saw clearly the need of the young
evangelist, and inquired of him: "Have you the witness within yourself?
Does the Spirit of God bear witness with your spirit that you are a
child of God?" Wesley seemed surprised at such questions. Spangenberg
continued, "Do you know Jesus Christ?" Wesley replied, "I know him as
the Saviour of the world." "True," responded the Moravian elder, "but do
you know that he saves you?" Wesley replied, "I hope he has died to save
me." Spangenberg gravely added, "Do you know yourself?" Wesley answered,
"I do;" and here the interview ended.
[Illustration: WESLEY'S ARM-CHAIR.]
Charles Wesley was Oglethorpe's secretary, in place of Rev. Samuel
Quincy, a native of Massachusetts, who retired from the office,
desiring to return to England, where he had been educated. Ingham seems
to have attached himself to Charles Wesley, and devoted himself to the
children and the poor, and was the first to follow Charles to England.
Delamotte was impelled to go to Georgia from his love of John Wesley and
his desire to serve him in any capacity; and he never left him for a day
while Wesley remained in America. He was the last to leave the colony.
John Wesley was the sole minister of the colony, and stood next to
Oglethorpe himself.
The Georgia to which Wesley came was very different from the Georgia of
to-day. It had only a few English settlements, the most of the territory
being the home of savage Indians. These tribes being at war with each
other, all access to them was cut off. Not being able to extend their
mission among them, Wesley and his colaborers turned their attention to
the whites, hoping that God would before long open their way to preach
the Gospel to the Indians. In the prosecution of their mission they
practiced the most rigid austerities. They slept on the ground instead
of on beds, lived on bread and water, dispensing with all the luxuries
and most of the necessities of life. They were, in season and out of
season, everywhere urging the people to a holy life. Wesley set apart
three hours of each day for visiting the people at their homes,
choosing the midday hours when the people were kept indoors by the
scorching heat.
Charles Wesley and Mr. Ingham were at Frederica, where the people were
frank to declare that they liked nothing they did. Even Oglethorpe
himself had become the enemy of his secretary, and falsely accused him
of inciting a mutiny.
Their plain, earnest, practical public preaching and private rebukes
aroused the spirit of persecution, which broke upon them without mixture
of mercy. Scandal, with its scorpion tongue; backbiting, with its canine
proclivities; and gossip, which also does immense business on borrowed
capital--these ran like fires over sun-scorched prairies, until these
devoted servants of God were well-nigh consumed.
At Frederica, Charles narrowly escaped assassination. So general and
bitter was the hate that he says: "Some turned out of the way to avoid
me." "The servant that used to wash my linen sent it back unwashed." "I
sometimes pitied and sometimes diverted myself with the odd expressions
of their contempt, but found the benefit of having undergone a much
lower degree of obloquy at Oxford."
While very sick he was unable to secure a few boards to lie upon, and
was obliged to lie on the ground in the corner of Mr. Reed's hut. He
thanked God that it had not as yet become a "capital offense to give
him a morsel of bread." Though very sick, he was able to go out at night
to bury a scout-boatman, "but envied him his quiet grave." He procured
the old bedstead on which the boatman had died, upon which to rest his
own sinking and almost dying frame; but the bedstead was soon taken from
him by order of Oglethorpe himself. But through the mercy of God and the
coming of his brother and Mr. Delamotte he recovered.
After about six months (February 5 to July 25) spent in labors more
abundant, and almost in stripes above measure, Providence opened his way
to return to England as bearer of dispatches to the government. He took
passage in a rickety old vessel with a drunken captain, and all came
near being lost at sea. The ship put into Boston in distress, and there
Charles Wesley remained for more than a month, sick much of the time,
but preaching several times in King's Chapel, corner of School and
Tremont Streets, and in Christ Church, on Salem Street. This latter
church remains as it was when Wesley occupied its pulpit.
John remained in Georgia--at Frederica and Savannah--battling with sin
and Satan, with a Christian boldness which might almost have inspired
wonder among the angels. His life was frequently threatened at
Frederica, and at Savannah there was no end to the insults he endured.
Hearing of his conflicts, Whitefield writes to him to "go on and
prosper, and, in the strength of God, make the devil's kingdom shake
about his ears."
Through the cunning craftiness and manifest hypocrisy of one Miss
Hopkey, niece of the chief magistrate, and a lady of great external
accomplishments, he came near being ruined. She sought his company;
bestowed on him every attention; watched him when sick; was always at
his early morning meetings; dressed in pure white because she learned
that he was pleased with that color; was always manifesting great
interest in his spiritual state; and all, without doubt, to cover up
deeper designs. Mr. Wesley, always unsuspecting and confiding, became
strongly attached to her for a time, but was subsequently convinced that
God did not approve of an alliance in that direction, and at once
determined to cut every cord which bound them. At this the lady became
greatly exasperated, and within a few days was married to another
man--Williamson--and then, with her husband and uncle to aid her, she
sought in every way the overthrow of Mr. Wesley.
Mr. Tyerman seeks to make this case, as, in fact, many others, turn to
the disadvantage of Wesley. He will have it that Wesley had promised to
marry Miss Hopkey, though Henry Moore declares that Wesley told him
that no such thing ever occurred. Mr. Tyerman gives credit to the
testimony of the hypocritical Miss Hopkey rather than to that of Henry
Moore and John Wesley.
After a time Wesley, for just causes, excluded Mrs. Williamson from the
Lord's table, and gave his reasons for so doing. For this he was
prosecuted before the courts, a packed and paid grand jury bringing
against him ten indictments, and the minority presenting a strong
counter report. The case never came to trial, though Wesley made seven
fruitless efforts to have it tried.
The prejudice excited against him by the chief magistrate and others
became so strong that he could accomplish but little good among the
people.
In the midst of these conflicts he held every Sunday, from five to six,
a prayer service in English; at nine, another in Italian; from 10:30 to
12:30 he preached a sermon in English and administered the communion; at
one he held a service in French; at two he catechised the children; at
three he held another service in English; still later he conducted a
service in his own house, consisting of reading, prayer, and praise; and
at six attended the Moravian service.
He finally resolved, as his mission seemed at an end, to leave Georgia
and return to England. His public announcement of his purpose created
great excitement among all classes. The magistrate forbade his
departure. Williamson demanded that he give bail to answer the suit
against him; but this he refused to do, telling them that he had sought
seven times to have the case tried, but in vain, and that for the
balance they could look after that. On the same night, after public
prayers, with four men to accompany him, Wesley left Savannah, December
2, 1737, never more to return. They took a small boat to Perrysburg, a
distance of some twelve miles. They then made their way on foot through
swamps and forests, suffering untold hardships from cold, hunger, and
thirst for four days, when they safely arrived at Port Royal. Here
Delamotte joined them, and all took boat for Charleston, where they
arrived after four more days of toil.
After spending a few days in Charleston Mr. Delamotte returned to
Savannah, and on the 22d day of December Mr. Wesley set sail for
England, where he safely arrived on the first day of the following
February, the next day after Mr. Whitefield had sailed for America.
Mr. Wesley did not regard his mission to America as a failure. He
blessed God for having been carried to America, contrary to all his
preceding resolutions. "Hereby I trust He hath, in some measure,
_humbled me and proved me, and shown me what was in my heart_."
Mr. Whitefield writes, on his arrival in Georgia: "The work Mr. Wesley
has done in America is inexpressible. His name is very precious among
the people; and he has laid a foundation that I hope neither man nor
devils will ever be able to shake. O, that I may follow him as he
followed Christ!"
CHAPTER VII.
WESLEY'S RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE.
MR. WESLEY'S religious experience deserves special notice. If he was
raised up by God for any purpose, it was to revive spiritual
Christianity, which included justification by faith, entire
sanctification, and the witness of the Holy Spirit. To understand his
own experience on these doctrines is the object of this chapter.
Let us first notice the external religious life which Mr. Wesley
maintained prior to the wonderful change which occurred soon after his
return from America. From his journals we learn that he said prayers
both public and private, and read the Scriptures and other good books
constantly. He experienced sensible comfort in reading à Kempis,
resulting in an entire change in his conversation and life. He set apart
two hours each day for religious retirement, and received the sacrament
every week. He watched against every sin, whether in word or deed. He
shook off all his trifling acquaintances, and was careful that every
moment of his time should be improved. He not only watched over his own
heart, but urged others to become religious. He visited those in
prison, assisted the poor and sick, and did what he could with his
presence and means for the souls and bodies of men. He deprived himself
of all the superfluities and many of the necessaries of life that he
might help others. He fasted twice each week, omitted no part of
self-denial which he thought lawful, and carefully used in public and
private at every opportunity all the means of grace. For the doing of
these things he became a byword, but rejoiced that his name was cast out
as evil. His sole aim was to do God's will and secure inward holiness.
Sometimes he had joy, sometimes sorrow; sometimes the terror of the law
alarmed him, and sometimes the comforts of the Gospel cheered him. He
had many remarkable answers to prayer, and many sensible soul comforts.
Let us next notice Mr. Wesley's estimate of his own religious state at
this time.
He found that he had not such faith in Christ as kept his heart from
being troubled in time of danger, for in a storm he cried unto God every
moment, but in a calm he did not. His words he discovered to be such as
did not edify, especially his manner of speaking of his enemies. By
these he was convinced of unbelief and pride. He gives a dark picture of
his state at this time, much darker than the light of after years
justified. "I went to America," he says, "to convert the Indians, but
O, who shall convert me? O, who will deliver me from this fear of
death?"
On landing in England he writes: "It is now two years and almost four
months since I left my native country in order to teach the Georgia
Indians the nature of Christianity, but what have I learned myself in
the meantime? Why, what I least of all expected--that I, who went to
America to convert others, was never myself converted to God."
He further says: "This, then, have I learned in the ends of the
earth--that I am fallen short of the glory of God, alienated from the
life of God; I am a child of wrath, an heir of hell."
In later years, when carefully reconsidering his early experience, Mr.
Wesley was not disposed to form the same severe judgment of his
religious state. He wisely added several qualifying remarks which should
not be omitted when his early language is employed. He could not say
that he was not converted at this time, or that he was a child of wrath.
To the expression, "I was never myself converted to God," is added this
note: "I am not sure of that," strongly intimating that he believed he
was then converted.
To the expression, "I am a child of wrath, an heir of hell," is added
this note: "I believe not." It seemed to his own mature judgment that
he was not the wretched sinner he had fancied himself to be in those sad
hours of his early history. He says, "I had then the faith of a
_servant_, though not that of a _son_." What he means by this expression
may be gathered from a sermon which he preached some fifty years later.
He says: "But what is the faith which is properly saving? what brings
eternal salvation to all those that keep it to the end? It is such a
divine conviction of God and the things of God as even in its infant
state enables everyone that possesses it to fear God and work
righteousness. And whosoever in every nation believes thus far, the
apostle declares, is accepted of him. He actually is at that very moment
in a state of acceptance. But he is at present only a _servant_ of God,
not properly a _son_. Meantime let it be well observed that the 'wrath
of God' no longer abideth on him.
"Indeed, nearly fifty years ago, when the preachers commonly called
Methodists began to preach that grand scriptural doctrine, salvation by
faith, they were not sufficiently apprised of the difference between a
servant and a child of God. They did not clearly understand that
everyone who feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him.
In consequence of this they are apt to make sad the hearts of those whom
God hath not made sad. For they frequently asked those who feared God,
'Do you know that your sins are forgiven?' And upon their saying 'No,'
immediately repeated, 'Then you are a child of the devil.' No, that does
not follow. It might have been said (and it is all that can be said with
propriety), 'Hitherto you are a _servant_; you are not a _child_ of
God.' The faith of a child is properly and directly a divine conviction
whereby every child of God is enabled to testify, 'The life that I now
live I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself
for me.' And whosoever hath this, the Spirit of God witnesseth with his
spirit that he is a child of God."
Again he says: "The faith of a servant implies a divine evidence of the
invisible world so far as it can exist without living experience.
Whoever has attained this, the faith of a servant, 'feareth God and
escheweth evil;' or, as is expressed by St. Peter, 'feareth God and
worketh righteousness.' In consequence of which he is in a degree, as
the apostle observes, 'accepted with him.' Elsewhere he is described in
these words: 'He that feareth God and keepeth his commandments.'"
A careful examination of these quotations will convince anyone that the
difference in Mr. Wesley's opinion between being a _servant_ and a _son_
is not that one is converted and the other is not, not that one is
accepted by God and the other rejected, but that one has the direct
witness of the Spirit that he is a child of God and the other has not.
This was Wesley's religious state when he returned to England. He was
not that lost soul, that heir of hell, which he reckoned himself to be,
but an accepted servant of God without the direct witness of the Spirit
to his sonship.
Meeting Peter Böhler, February 7, 1738, he (Böhler) was made the
instrument of a great blessing to his soul. Böhler was a Moravian, nine
years the junior of Wesley; a most devout man, deeply versed in
spiritual things, and well qualified to lead the earnest Oxford student
into the path of peace. Wesley was astonished at the announcement of
Böhler that true faith in Christ was inseparably attended by dominion
over sin, and constant peace arising from a sense of forgiveness. He
could in no way accept the doctrine until he had first examined the
Scriptures and had heard the testimony of three witnesses adduced by
Böhler. But what staggered him most was the doctrine of instantaneous
conversion. This he could not accept. But a careful appeal to the Bible
and the testimony of Böhler's witnesses settled the question. Thus "this
man of erudition," says Mr. Tyerman, "and almost anchorite piety sat at
the feet of this godly German like a little child, and was content to be
thought a fool that he might be wise."
But the time drew near when the veil was to be rent, and he who had been
for half a score of years a seeker was to behold the glories of the
inner temple. His brother Charles had already received the gift of the
Spirit, and Whitefield was rejoicing in the same blessing; but John
still lingered. He became so oppressed with his spiritual state that he
thought of abandoning preaching; but Böhler said: "By no means. Preach
faith till you have it, and then because you have it you will preach
it." So he began. He uttered strong words at St. Lawrence's and St.
Catherine's, and was informed that he could preach no more in either
place. At Great St. Helen's he spoke with such plainness that he was
told he must preach no more there. At St. Ann's he spoke of free
salvation by faith, and the doors of the church were closed against him.
The same result attended his preaching at St. John's and St. Bennett's,
until he found the words of a friend addressed to his brother true in
his own case, that "wherever you go this 'foolishness of preaching' will
alienate hearts from you and open mouths against you."
The simplicity of faith staggered the youthful philosopher. Böhler, in
writing of the Wesleys to Zinzendorf, says: "Our mode of believing in
the Saviour is so easy to Englishmen that they cannot reconcile
themselves to it; if it were a little more artful, they could much
sooner find their way into it."
Wesley's distress of soul continued until the 24th of May. At five in
the morning of that auspicious day he opened his Testament and read:
"There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by
these ye may be partakers of the divine nature." Later in the day he
opened the word and read: "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God."
Having attended St. Paul's Cathedral in the afternoon, where the anthem
was a great comfort to his soul, he went with great reluctance to a
society meeting at night at Aldersgate Street. There he found one
reading Luther's preface to the Romans; and at about a quarter before
nine, while the change which God works in the heart through faith in
Christ was being described, "I felt," he says, "my heart strangely
warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ--Christ alone--for salvation; and
an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and
saved me from the law of sin and death; and then I testified openly to
all there what I now felt in my heart."
From this moment a new spiritual world opened upon the mind and heart of
John Wesley. He not only began at once to pray for those who had
ill-used him, but openly testified to all present what God had done for
his soul. And from that hour onward, for fifty-three years, he bore
through the land a heart flaming with love.
In 1744, more than six years subsequent to that blessed experience at
Aldersgate, Mr. Wesley relates another experience which we must not
overlook. It is related in these words: "In the evening while I was
reading prayers at Snowfield I found such light and strength as I never
remember to have had before. I saw every thought, as well as action or
word, just as it was rising in my heart, and whether it was right before
God or tainted with pride or selfishness. I never knew before--I mean
not at this time--what it was to be still before God. I waked the next
morning by the grace of God in the same spirit; and about eight, being
with two or three that believed in Jesus, I felt such an awe and tender
sense of the presence of God as greatly confirmed me therein; so that
God was before me all the day long. I sought and found him in every
place, and could truly say, when I lay down at night, 'Now I have lived
to-day.'"
In 1771, referring to this experience, he says: "Many years since I saw
that 'without holiness no man shall see the Lord.' I began by following
after it, and inciting all with whom I had any intercourse to do the
same. Ten years after God gave me a clearer view than I had before of
the way how to attain it; namely, by faith in the Son of God. And
immediately I declared to all, 'We are saved from sin, we are made holy,
by faith. _This I testified in private, in public, in print_; and God
confirmed it by a _thousand witnesses_. I have continued to declare this
for about thirty years; and God has continued to confirm the work of
grace."
These experiences flamed out in his whole life. He claimed that he knew
whereof he affirmed. While he advocated strongly the doctrines of
Christianity, he was most earnest in promoting the experience of
personal holiness.
A question has been propounded here eliciting much controversy, namely,
"Did Mr. Wesley ever profess to have experienced the blessing of entire
sanctification?" It does not appear to us to be a question of as much
importance as many seem to imagine. The more important question is: Did
Mr. Wesley believe and teach that such an experience was possible in
this life? Did he encourage his people to seek such a blessing, and,
when obtained, profess it in a humble spirit? This question among others
was submitted to Dr. James M. Buckley: "Have we any record of Mr.
Wesley's professing to be entirely sanctified; if so, where may it be
found?" His answer will be regarded as entirely satisfactory to all
unprejudiced minds.
"This question reappears from time to time, as though of great
importance. We know of no record of his explicitly professing or saying
in so many words, 'I am entirely sanctified;' no record of uttering
words to that effect. But we have no more doubt that he habitually
professed it than that he professed conversion. The relation John Wesley
sustained to his followers, and to this doctrine, makes it certain that
he professed it, and almost certain that there would be no special
record of it.
"1. All Wesley's followers assumed him to be what he urged them to be.
Before they were in a situation to make records his position was so
fixed that to record his descriptions of this state would have been
unthought of.
"2. He preached entire sanctification, and urged it upon his followers.
"3. He defended its attainability in many public controversies.
"4. He urged and defended the profession of it, under certain conditions
and safeguards; made lists of professors; told men they had lost it
because they did not profess; and said and did so many things, only to
be explained upon the assumption that he professed to enjoy the
blessing, that no other opinion can support it."[D]
Soon after this experience at Aldersgate Chapel Mr. Wesley made a
journey to Herrnhut, Germany, to visit the Moravian brethren, but soon
withdrew from them because of their errors in doctrine. He antagonized
the dogma of Zinzendorf, that men are entirely sanctified at the moment
when they are converted. His opinion of the count differed materially
from his estimation of Böhler.
CHAPTER VIII.
WESLEY'S MULTIPLIED LABORS.
NO sooner had Mr. Wesley experienced the transforming power of grace
than he hastened to declare it to all, taking "the world" for his
"parish."
After confessing to those immediately about him what God had done for
his soul he flew with all possible speed to declare it to the miners in
their darkness, to the Newgate felons in their loathsome cells, to the
wealthy and refined worshipers at St. John's and St. Ives', offering in
burning words a common salvation alike to the Newgate felon and to the
St. John's and St. Ives' aristocracy.
Mr. Wesley was a most pertinacious adherent of the English
Establishment, and never dreamed of attempting the salvation of souls by
preaching the Gospel outside of her church walls until he was ruthlessly
expelled from all her pulpits. But he had firmly resolved that neither
bishops, nor curates, nor church wardens should stand between him and
duty. But what to do and where to go he did not know. Every door seemed
closed against him, and almost every face save the face of God frowned
upon him. But while God smiled he knew no fear. In his extremity he took
counsel of Whitefield, resulting in a firm purpose to do the work to
which Providence seemed to have clearly called them. Churches were
closed, to be sure, but the unsaved and perishing were everywhere except
in the churches, and to reach and to save them they betook themselves to
the wide, wide world. They were now seen in hospitals, administering
spiritual comfort to the sick; in prisons, offering eternal life to
condemned felons; at Kingswood, calling the dark colliers to a knowledge
of the truth. In these places unfrequented by sacerdotal robes the
Gospel of the grace of God was carried by these unhonored servants of
Jesus. But soon prisons and hospitals were denied them, and then they
fled to the fields and to the streets of the cities, choosing for their
pulpits the market-house steps, a horse-block, a coal heap, a table, a
stone wall, a mountain side, a horse's back, etc.
The colliers of Kingswood had no church, no Sabbath, no Gospel. They
were the most corrupt, degraded, blasphemous class to be found in
England. Southey describes them as "lawless, brutal, and worse than
heathen." They seemed to have been forsaken of God and man. This was a
fit place to test the power of "the Gospel of the grace of God." The
intrepid Whitefield was the first to break the ice. "Pulpits are
denied," he says, "and the poor colliers are ready to perish." So he
unfurled the Gospel banner "with a mountain for his pulpit," he says,
"and the broad heavens for a sounding-board."
The Wesleys are lifting up their voices like trumpets in all parts of
the kingdom. They are threading their way along the mountains of Wales,
where the people know as little of Christianity as do the wild Indians
of our Western plains. They are seen in Ireland, in all her towns and
cities, calling her papal-cursed sons to a knowledge of Jesus. Again
their voices are heard amid the hills and vales of Scotland, urging her
stern clans to accept Jesus by faith alone. Then they are surrounded by
tens of thousands of besmeared miners who are weeping for sin and
rejoicing in deliverance from it.
Mr. Wesley and John Nelson for three weeks labored to introduce the
Gospel into Cornwall. During this time they slept on the floor. Nelson
says that Mr. Wesley had his great coat for his pillow, while Nelson had
Burkitt's _Notes on the New Testament_ for his. After they had been
there nearly three weeks, one morning about three o'clock, Mr. Wesley
turned over, and finding Nelson awake, clapped him on his side, saying,
"Brother Nelson, let us be of good cheer; I have one whole side yet, for
the skin is off but one side." As they were leaving Cornwall Mr. Wesley
stopped his horse to pick blackberries, saying, "Brother Nelson, we
ought to be thankful that there are plenty of blackberries, for this is
the best country I ever saw to get an appetite and the worst place to
provide means to satisfy it." Still they courageously pushed forward,
with the one purpose of saving men.
That we may aid the reader in getting a clearer and more comprehensive
conception of the immense amount of labor performed by Mr. Wesley, we
will arrange it under distinct heads:
1. His travels were immense. He averaged, during a period of fifty-four
years, about five thousand miles a year, some say eight, making in all
at least some two hundred and ninety thousand miles, a distance equal to
circumnavigating the globe about twelve times. It must not be forgotten
that most of this travel was performed on horseback. Think of riding
around the globe on horseback twelve times!
2. The amount of his preaching was unparalleled. Mr. Wesley preached not
less than twenty sermons a week--frequently many more. These sermons
were delivered mostly in the open air and under circumstances calculated
to test the nerve of the most vigorous frame. He did, in the matter of
preaching, what no other man ever did--he preached on an average, for a
period of fifty-four years, fifteen sermons a week, making in all
forty-two thousand four hundred, besides numberless exhortations and
addresses on a great variety of occasions.
A minister in these times does well to preach one hundred sermons a
year. At this rate, to preach as many sermons as Mr. Wesley did, such a
minister must live and preach four hundred and twenty-four years. Think
of a minister preaching two sermons each week day and three each Sabbath
for fifty-four years, and some idea can be formed of Mr. Wesley's labors
in this department.
3. His literary labors were extraordinary. While traveling five thousand
miles and more a year, or at least about fourteen miles a day, and
preaching two sermons, and frequently five, each day, he read
extensively. He read not less than two thousand two hundred volumes on
all subjects, many of the volumes folios, after the old English style.
His journals show that he read not only to understand, but to severely
criticise his author as well.
The number of his publications will scarcely be credited by those who
are not familiar with them, especially when we consider the amount of
time he spent in traveling and preaching, and the urgency of his
engagements, both of a public and private nature.
He wrote and published grammars of the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French,
and English languages.
He was for many years editor of a monthly periodical of fifty-six pages,
known as the _Arminian Magazine_, requiring the undivided attention of
any ordinary man in these times.
He wrote, abridged, revised, and published a library of fifty volumes
known as the _Christian Library_, one of the most remarkable collections
of Christian literature of the times. He subsequently reread and revised
the whole work with great care, and it was afterward published in thirty
volumes--a marvel of excellence and industry.
He published an abridgment of Mosheim's _Ecclesiastical History_, with
important additions, in four volumes.
He published an abridgment of the _History of England_, in four volumes.
He compiled and published a _Compendium of Natural Philosophy_, in five
volumes.
He arranged and published a collection of moral and sacred poems, in
three volumes.
He published an abridgment of Milton's _Paradise Lost_, with notes. He
published an abridgment of Young's _Night Thoughts_.
He wrote and published a commentary on the whole Bible in four large
volumes, but the portion on the Old Testament was rendered almost
worthless by the abridgment of the notes by the printer in order to get
them within a given compass.
He compiled a complete dictionary of the English language, much used in
his day. He compiled and published a history of Rome. He published
selections from the Latin classics for the use of students.
He published an abridgment of Goodwin's _Treatise of Justification_. He
abridged and published in two volumes Brooke's _Fool of Quality_.
He wrote a good-sized work on electricity. He prepared and published
three medical works for the common people; one entitled _Primitive
Physic_ was highly esteemed in the old country. He compiled and
published six volumes of church music. His poetical works, in connection
with those of his brother Charles, are said to have amounted to not less
than forty volumes. Charles composed the larger part, but they passed
under the revision of John, without which we doubt if Charles Wesley's
hymns would have been what they are--the most beautiful and
soul-inspiring in the English language.
In addition to all this there are seven large octavo volumes of sermons,
letters, controversial papers, journals, etc. It is said that Mr.
Wesley's works, including translations and abridgments, amounted to more
than two hundred volumes, for we have not given here a complete list of
his publications. To this must be added:
4. His pastoral labors. It is doubtful if any pastor in these times does
more pastoral work than did Mr. Wesley. He speaks frequently of these
labors. In London he visits all the members, and from house to house
exhorts and comforts them. For some time he visited all the "Bands" and
"Select Societies," appointing all the band and class leaders. He had
under his personal care tens of thousands of souls.
To these multiplied labors he added the establishment of schools,
building of chapels, raising of funds to carry on the work, and a
special care over the whole movement. It may be affirmed that neither in
his travels, his literary labors, his preaching, nor in his pastoral
supervision of the flock of Christ has he often, if ever, been
surpassed. "Few men could have traveled as much as he, had they omitted
all else. Few could have preached as much without either travel or
study. And few could have written and published as much had they avoided
both travel and preaching." It is not too much to say that among
uninspired men one of more extraordinary character than John Wesley
never lived!
It may be asked, How was he able to accomplish so much? He improved
every moment of every day to the very best advantage.
Mr. Fletcher, who for some time was his traveling companion, says: "His
diligence is matchless. Though oppressed with the weight of seventy
years and the care of more than thirty thousand souls, he shames still,
by his unabated zeal and immense labors, all the young ministers of
England, perhaps of Christendom. He has generally blown the Gospel
trumpet and ridden twenty miles before the most of the professors who
despise his labors have left their downy pillows. As he begins the day,
the week, the year, so he concludes them, still intent upon extensive
services for the glory of the Redeemer and the good of souls."
In order to save time he, in the first place, ascertained how much sleep
he needed; and when once settled he never varied from it to the end of
life. He rose at four in the morning and retired at ten in the evening,
never losing at any time, he says, "ten minutes by wakefulness." The
first hour of each day was devoted to private devotions; then every
succeeding hour and moment was employed in earnest labor. His motto was,
"Always in haste, but never in a hurry." "I have," he says, "no time to
be in a hurry. Leisure and I have taken leave of each other."
He makes the remarkable statement that ten thousand cares were no more
weight to his mind than ten thousand hairs to his head. "I am never
tired with writing, preaching, or traveling."
With all his travel, labor, and care, he declares that he "enjoyed more
hours of private retirement than any man in England."
At the beginning of his extraordinary career he became the most rigid
economist. Having thirty pounds a year, he lived on twenty-eight, and
gave away two. The next year he received sixty pounds; he still lived on
twenty-eight, and gave away thirty-two. The following year, out of
ninety pounds, he gave away sixty-two, and the next year ninety-two
pounds out of one hundred and twenty.
CHAPTER IX.
WESLEY'S DOMESTIC RELATIONS.
DIVINE Providence seems to indicate that some men are ordained or set
apart to celibacy; that the special work to which they are particularly
called is such as to make it necessary that they should abstain from
that otherwise legal, sacred, and highly honorable conjugal relation.
Not that this duty is restricted to any order of the clergy--as in the
Romish Church--but to particular persons in all the Churches who are
divinely selected for special work. This was the case with Elijah and
Elisha, with John the Baptist and St. Paul. To John Wesley in the Old
World, and Bishop Asbury in the New, Providence seems to have indicated
this course of life, though Wesley was slow to see it, and did not until
his sad experience made it clear to him.
Though the world was his parish, he had a heart of love which craved
deep, pure, soul companionship. He was made to love. Though he was a
lamb in gentleness, he was a lion in courage. He was as daring as
Richard the Lion-hearted, or as Ney or Murat, in the battle, yet he had
a heart as simple as a child and as affectionate as an angel. He loved
everybody. He was strongly attached to his mother, his sisters, and
brothers. He clung ardently to his old associates, though they sometimes
ill-treated him. With such a man a homeless, single life could only be
submitted to under a sense of imperative duty.
After forty-seven years of single life, being of the opinion that he
could be more useful in the married life than to remain single, and
after first consulting his lifelong friend, Rev. Mr. Perronet, vicar of
Shoreham, who fully approved his course, he then looked about to see who
was a suitable person to become his helpmate. After a time he firmly
believed he had found the proper one in the person of Mrs. Grace Murray,
of Newcastle. She was the widow of Alexander Murray, of Scotland.
Mrs. Murray had been converted, while on a visit to London, under the
ministry of Mr. Whitefield and the Wesleys. She at once joined the
Methodists, abandoned all worldly and fashionable society, and devoted
herself to the cause of God. It is true she was not allied to the
aristocracy, and her husband followed the sea. Her husband, when he
learned of her change, became greatly enraged, thinking all his
pleasures were at an end, and threatened, if she did not abandon the
Methodists and return to her former course of life, that he would
commit her to the madhouse. This nearly broke her heart, and under its
influence she became prostrated and sick nigh unto death. Her husband,
seeing the effects of his treatment, relented, and invited the
Methodists to come to his house and pray for his dying wife. Under a
change of treatment, and the blessing of God, she recovered. The husband
soon after left for a sea voyage, was taken sick, died, and was buried
in the ocean. She sadly mourned his untimely death, for, in the main, he
was a kind husband.
It was about this time that Mr. Wesley became acquainted with her, and
recognized in her a valuable helper. She seems to have been a charming
lady. Her deep piety, simplicity of character, amiable disposition,
remarkable zeal, and active charity attracted his attention. He
maintained at Newcastle a Preachers' House for himself and his preachers
while in the city. He had there, also, an asylum for orphans and widows,
for whom he made provision. Over this institution he installed Mrs.
Murray as housekeeper. Finding her admirably suited to this work,
especially among females, he appointed her class leader. She then, under
his direction, visited the female classes in Bristol, London, etc. Her
duty was to regulate the classes, organize female bands, and inspire her
sisters to deeper piety and more active benevolence. Her devotion and
unassuming manners won the affection of the people. They hailed her
coming with a thousand welcomes, and parted with her with regret.
[Illustration: WESLEY'S CLOCK.]
Mr. Wesley observed her spirit and labors, and began to feel that she
was the providential companion for him--a real helpmate. Her tastes,
temperament, and mission seemed to be one with his own. Without
hesitation or reserve he offered her his hand. It was accepted with
great cheerfulness. She declared herself ready to go with him to the
ends of the earth, and esteemed it a great honor to be allied to him.
The marriage was to be celebrated in October, 1749. But on the first day
of that month he met Charles Wesley and Mr. Whitefield at Leeds, and
received the astounding intelligence from them that Grace Murray was
married the night before, at Newcastle, to John Bennett--one of Wesley's
preachers--and that they had been present and witnessed the marriage
ceremony.
This singular affair has never been satisfactorily explained. It is
evident that Charles Wesley and Mr. Whitefield for some cause encouraged
the marriage of Mrs. Murray with Mr. Bennett; but what their motive
could have been is not known. Several reasons have been given, but none
seem worthy of the men. Whatever their motive, it must be
acknowledged to have been entirely unjustifiable. The conduct of the
lady was equally inexplicable, and must ever remain so.
In this trying affair we cannot but admire the conduct of Mr. Wesley.
Knowing the part that Mr. Whitefield had taken in the matter, he went
the next morning to hear him preach, and speaks in high terms of his
sermon. The day following he preached himself at Leeds in the morning,
and in the afternoon met Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, and of the meeting he
writes to a friend, "Such a scene I think you never saw." They never met
again, except in London in 1788, when Mr. Wesley was eighty-five years
of age, and when Mrs. Bennett had been a widow for nearly twenty-nine
years. The meeting was brief, and no mention was made of former years.
Mr. Bennett was treated by Mr. Wesley with the utmost kindness. He,
however, became an enemy of Mr. Wesley, withdrew from the Connection,
and joined the Calvinists. He lived ten years, and died, leaving Mrs.
Bennett a widow with five children, the eldest not eight years old. She
lived a widow for nearly forty-four years. She subsequently returned to
the Wesleyan Methodists, held class meetings in her house, and had the
reputation of being a woman of excellent character and deep piety. She
died February 23, 1803. Her last words were, "Glory be to thee, my God;
peace thou givest." Dr. Bunting preached her funeral sermon. Whoever
reads Mr. Tyerman's account of these events should also read Dr. Rigg's
_Living Wesley_, in order to get an unbiased account of this
transaction.
Mr. Wesley, baffled in his first attempt, and still believing it was his
duty to marry, made a second effort; and this time he offered his hand
to Mrs. Vazeille, the widow of a London merchant. She readily accepted
the proposal, and the marriage was at once consummated. Says a recent
writer, "He married a widow, and caught a tartar." She was a lady of
independent fortune, with four children. Mr. Wesley declined to have
anything to do with her wealth, and had it all settled upon herself and
her children.
She was a woman of good standing in society, and was supposed to be a
suitable person for the position she assumed. She was agreeable in
person and quite faultless in manner, and could easily make herself
useful to all classes. But appearances are said to be deceptive; at
least it proved so in this case. She seems to have possessed a temper
which, when aroused, was utterly uncontrollable.
Not four months of married life had passed before she began to complain
of her husband. Before their marriage she agreed that he should not be
expected to travel a mile less, or preach one sermon less, than before
their union. But now she began to complain of everything--long
journeys, bad roads, and poor fare. She was not willing to remain at
home, for then she was without the attention she had a right to receive;
and when he was at home he was preaching two or three times a day,
visiting the sick, looking after the societies, and carrying on
extensive correspondence.
From fancying herself neglected by her husband she became jealous of
him--a most absurd and insane idea. But on this her insanity knew no
bounds. She is said to have traveled a hundred miles in order to
intercept him at some town, and watch from a window to ascertain who
might be in the carriage with him. She went so far as to open his
private letters and abstract his papers and place them in the hands of
those who would use them to his damage. She would add to his
letters--usually those from his female correspondents--to make them
appear to contain words of questionable character. She used the
newspapers to blacken his reputation. She went so far at times as to lay
violent hands upon him, tear his hair, and otherwise abuse him. Said Mr.
Hampson (who was not one of Mr. Wesley's warmest friends) to his son one
day: "Jack, I was once on the point of committing murder. When I was in
the north of Ireland I went into a room, and found Mrs. Wesley flaming
with fury. Her husband was on the floor, where she had been trailing
him by the hair of his head; she herself was still holding in her hand
venerable locks which she had plucked up by the roots. I felt," said the
gigantic Hampson, "as though I could have knocked the soul out of her."
Even Southey says: "Fain would she have made him, like Mark Antony, give
up all for love; and, being disappointed in that hope, she tormented him
in such a manner by her outrageous jealousy and abominable temper that
she deserved to be classed in a triad with Xantippe and the wife of Job
as one of the three bad wives." But finally she gathered up a quantity
of his journals and other papers and left him, never to return. The only
record which the good man makes is this: "I did not forsake her; I did
not dismiss her; I will not recall her."
Wesley may not have been in all respects in this matter faultless. But
no one could ever affirm that he was wanting in genuine affection.
Charles Wesley, who knew the inwardness of all John's domestic troubles,
affirms that "nothing could surpass my brother's patience with his
perverse, peevish spouse."
Mrs. Wesley died in 1781, and the church people had it inscribed upon
her tombstone that she was "a woman of exemplary piety." "But," says the
late Professor Sheppard, "you know a tombstone is like a corporation--it
has no body to be burned, and no soul to be damned."
CHAPTER X.
WESLEY'S PERSECUTIONS.
HAD the immense labors of John Wesley noted in a former chapter been
performed under public patronage, cheered on by all, they would have
seemed less arduous. Men may prosecute a reform when public opinion
favors it with comparative ease, but with less entitlement to honor than
he has a right to claim who does it in the face of passion and interest.
The labors of John Wesley were prosecuted in the teeth of opposition
such as seldom falls to the lot of man to endure. And what made it more
dastardly and cruel was the fact that it was instigated and principally
conducted by the officials of that Church of which he was a worthy
member and ordained minister to the day of his death.
It is a sad fact, but nevertheless true, that most of the opposition and
persecution encountered by reformers and revivalists have come from the
churchmen of the times. It has been the Church opposing those who were
honestly seeking her own reformation. When the Church substitutes forms
for godliness, and devotes herself to ecclesiasticism instead of
soul-saving, and place-seeking takes the place of piety, she is ready to
resist all efforts for her restoration to spirituality as irregular and
offensive.
No sooner had Wesley exposed the sins of the Church, especially those of
the pulpit, than the pulpit denounced him; and the press, taking its
keynote from the pulpit, thundered as though the "abomination of
desolation" had actually "taken possession of the holy place." Then the
idle rabble rushed to the front, and mob violence and mob law were the
order of the hour.
The flaming denunciations of the pulpits of the Establishment against
Mr. Wesley and his people have never been surpassed in the history of
the English nation. Wesley says: "We were everywhere represented as mad
dogs, and treated accordingly. In sermons, newspapers, and pamphlets of
all kinds we were painted as unheard-of monsters. But this moved us not;
we went on testifying salvation by faith both to small and great, and
not counting our lives dear to ourselves, so we might finish our course
with peace."
The Wesleys were represented as "bold movers of sedition and ringleaders
of the rabble, to the disgrace of their order." They were denounced by
learned divines as "restless deceivers of the people," "babblers,"
"insolent pretenders," "men of spiritual sleight and cunning
craftiness." They were guilty of "indecent, false, and unchristian
reflections on the clergy." They were "new-fangled teachers," "rash,
uncharitable censurers," "intruding into other men's labors," and
running "into wild fancies until the pale of the Church is too strait
for them." They were "half dissenters _in_ the Church, and more
dangerous _to_ the Church than those who were total dissenters from it."
Bishop Gibson declared that they endeavored "to justify their own
extraordinary methods of teaching by casting unworthy reflections upon
the parochial clergy as deficient in the discharge of their duty, and
not instructing the people in the true doctrines of Christianity."
Even Dr. Doddridge is not at all "satisfied with the high pretenses they
make to the divine influence." Dr. Trapp is bold in pronouncing them "a
set of crack-brained enthusiasts and profane hypocrites."
The _Weekly Miscellany_ denounces Wesley as the "ringleader, fomenter,
and first cause of all divisions and feuds that have happened in Oxford,
London, Bristol, and other places where he has been." He manages by
"preaching, bookselling, wheedling, and sponging to get, it is believed,
an income of £700 a year, some say £1,000. This is priestcraft to
perfection."
Further on in life he is accused of "making unwarrantable dissensions in
the Church," and "prejudicing the people wherever he comes against his
brethren the clergy." He is a "sower and ringleader of dissension,
endeavoring with unwearied assiduity to set the flock at variance with
their ministers and each other," assuming to himself "great wisdom and
high attainments in all spiritual knowledge." "You go," says this
writer, "from one end of the nation to another lamenting the heresies of
your brethren, and instilling into the people's minds that they are led
into error by their pastors."
"It was Mr. Wesley's fidelity," says Mr. Tyerman, "far more than the
novelties of his doctrines and proceedings that brought upon him the
persecution he encountered."
The former friends of Wesley now turned against him on points merely
doctrinal. No one can read the invectives of Sir Richard and Rev.
Rowland Hill, Sir Walter Shirley and Rev. Augustus Toplady, without
feelings of great astonishment. When Mr. Wesley had passed his
threescore years and ten Mr. Toplady, a young man of thirty, attacked
him in the most violent manner, employing epithets of the most abusive
character. We select the following as samples from the many. Wesley is
accused of the "sophistry of the Jesuit and the dictatorial authority of
a pope." He is a "lurking, sly assassin," guilty of "audacity and
falsehood;" a "knave," guilty of "mean, malicious impotence." He is an
"Ishmaelite," a "bigot," a "papist," a "defamer," a "reviler," a "liar,"
without the "honesty of a heathen;" an "impudent slanderer," with
"Satanic guilt only exceeded by Satan himself, if even by him." He is an
"echo of Satan."
Robert Hall well said, "I would not incur the guilt of that virulent
abuse which Toplady cast upon him [Wesley], for points merely
speculative and of very little importance, for ten thousand worlds."
_Poets_ who should have sung for Jesus prostituted their gifts and
burdened their songs with the bitterest invectives against Wesley and
his people.
One entitles his poem "Perfection: a practical epistle, calmly addressed
to the greatest hypocrite in England--that person being John Wesley."
Another poem was entitled "Methodism Displayed: a satire, illustrated
and verified from John Wesley's fanatical Journals."
Another, entitled "The Mechanic Inspired: or, The Methodists' Welcome to
Rome." As a specimen of this delectable production we give the following
stanza:
Ye dupes of sly, Romish, itinerant liars,
The spawn of French prophets and mendicant friars;
Ye pious enthusiasts! who riot and rob
With holy grimace and sanctified sob.
Another, "The Methodist and Mimic."
Still another, "The Methodist, a poem." In this production Mr. Wesley is
described as being nursed on "demoniac milk," and as one who
Had Moorfield trusted to his care,
For Satan keeps an office there.
Another, entitled "The Troublers of Israel; in which the principles of
those who turn the world upside down are displayed."
Another, in which the writer exhorts Wesley to
Haste hence to Rome, thy proper place,
Why should we share in thy disgrace?
We need no greater proof to see
Thy blasphemies with his agree.
And yet another, entitled "Wesley's Apostasy," etc., in which occurs
this verse, among others equally bad:
In vain for worse may Wesley search the globe,
A viper hatched beneath the harlot's robe;
Rome in her glory has no greater boast,
Than Wesley aims--to all conviction lost.
This may answer for the poets, though their number is nearly legion.
_Artists_ employed their God-given powers in traducing Wesley and his
people.
William Hogarth published a painting and engraving entitled "Credulity,
Superstition, and Fanaticism, being a satire on Methodism."
_Comedians_, who are generally ready to lend themselves to any vile
work, employed the stage to blacken the character of Wesley.
Samuel Foote, an actor, wrote a play entitled "The Minor, a Comedy," in
which the Methodists were ridiculed and slandered.
Samuel Pottenger wrote a play entitled "The Methodist, a Comedy."
Another was soon after produced--"The Hypocrite, a Comedy, as it was
performed in the Theater Royal, Drury Lane."
Thus _pulpit_, _press_, _pencil_, and _stage_ united to crush Wesley and
his people. No means were left untried. Though they followed him through
all his active ministerial life, yet the gates of hell did not and could
not prevail against him and his work.
MOB VIOLENCE.
WHEN pulpit, press, and stage combine to crush vital Christianity they
soon arouse an ally in the ignorant, restless, unholy masses, ever ready
to aid in forwarding the work of the Prince of Darkness.
When pulpits in London, Bristol, Bath, and, in fact, everywhere were
closed against Wesley one of two ways was open before him--he must
either abandon the work to which he was sure God had called him, or he
must break over ecclesiastical rules and go outside the churches. He was
not long choosing.
A good-sized volume could be filled with accounts of mob violence which
came upon Wesley and his people, but we have space for a few cases only,
which must be taken as samples of the many.
While preaching at Moorfield a mob met him, broke down the table on
which he stood, and in various ways abused and insulted him. Nothing
daunted, he mounted a stone wall near by and exhorted the people until
silence was restored. He often found himself here in the midst of a sea
of human passion, the crowds frequently numbering from twenty to forty
thousand.
At Sheffield hell from beneath seemed moved to meet him at his coming.
As he was wont to do, he took his stand out of doors and faced the
crowd. In the midst of his sermon a military officer rushed upon him,
brandishing a sword, and threatening his life. Wesley faced him, threw
open his breast, and bade him do as he liked. The officer cowered.
The preaching house was completely demolished over the heads of the
devout worshipers. Wesley says: "It was a glorious time. Many found the
Spirit of glory and of God resting upon them." The next day, nothing
daunted, he was in the midst of the town, preaching the great salvation.
The mob assembled, followed him to his lodgings, smashed in the windows,
and threatened to take his life. But while the mob was howling without
like beasts of prey Wesley was so little disturbed that he fell into a
quiet slumber.
At Wednesbury an organized mob went to nearly all the Methodist families
in town, beating and abusing men, women, and children. They spoiled
their wearing apparel and cut open their beds and scattered the
contents, leaving whole families houseless and homeless in midwinter and
under the peltings of a pitiless storm. The people were informed that if
they would sign a paper agreeing never to read or sing or pray together,
or hear the Methodists preach again, their houses should not be
demolished. A few complied, but the greater number answered, "We have
already lost our goods, and nothing more can follow but the loss of our
lives, which we will lose also rather than wrong our consciences."
A few days after, Wesley rode boldly into Wednesbury, and in a public
park in the center of the town proclaimed to an immense crowd "Jesus
Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever." The mob assembled,
arrested him, and dragged him before a magistrate, who inquired, "What
have Mr. Wesley and the Methodists done?"
"Why, plaze your worship," cried one, "they sing psalms all day and make
folks get up at five o'clock in the morning. Now, what would your
worship advise us to do?" "Go home," replied the magistrate, "and be
quiet."
Not satisfied with this, they hurried him off to another magistrate. A
few friends followed, but were soon beaten back by a Walsall mob, which
rushed upon them like wild beasts. All but four of Wesley's friends were
vanquished. These stood by him to the last. One of these was a brave
woman whose English blood boiled over. She is said to have knocked down
four Walsall men one after another, and would have laid them all
sprawling at her feet had not four brawny men seized her and held her
while a fifth beat her until they were quite ashamed to be seen--five
men beating one woman!
The mob tried to throw Wesley down, that they might trample him under
their feet. They struck at him with clubs, and must have nearly killed
him had they hit him. They cried, "Knock his brains out!" "Drown him!"
"Kill the dog!" "Throw him into the river!" One cried, "Crucify him!
crucify him!"
During all this Wesley was calm. It only came into his mind, he says,
that if they should throw him into the river it might spoil the papers
in his pocket. He finally escaped out of their hands, and, meeting his
brother at Nottingham, Charles says that he "_looked_ like a soldier of
Christ. His clothes were torn to tatters." Subsequently the leader of
that mob was converted, and being asked by Charles Wesley what he
thought of his brother, "I think," said he, "that he was a _mon_ of God,
and God was with him, when so many of us could not kill one _mon_!"
While preaching at Roughlee a drunken rabble assembled, led on by a
godless constable. Wesley was arrested and taken before a magistrate. On
the way he was struck on the face and head, and clubs were flourished
about his person with threats of murder. The justice demanded that he
promise not to come to Roughlee again. Wesley answered that he would
sooner cut off his head than make such a promise. As he departed from
the magistrate the mob followed, cursing him and throwing stones. Wesley
was beaten to the earth and forced back into the house. Mr. Mackford,
who came with Mr. Wesley from Newcastle, was dragged by the hair of his
head, and sustained injuries from which he never fully recovered. Some
of the Methodists present were beaten with clubs, others trampled in the
mire; one was forced to leap from a rock ten or twelve feet high into
the river, and others escaped with their lives under a shower of
missiles. The magistrate witnessed all this with apparent satisfaction,
without any attempt to stay the murderous tide.
[Illustration: SAMUEL WESLEY'S GRAVE, UPON WHICH JOHN PREACHED HIS
FAMOUS SERMON.]
At another place a crowd assembled, arrested a number of Methodists, and
dragged them before a magistrate, who inquired, "What have the
Methodists done?" "Why, your worship," said one, "these people profess
to be better than anybody else. They pray all the time, by day and by
night." "Is that all they have done?" asked the magistrate. "No, sir,"
answered an old man, "may it please your worship, they have converted my
wife. Till she went with them she had such a tongue! Now she is as quiet
as a lamb." "Carry them back, carry them back," said the magistrate,
"and let them convert all the scolds in town!" At Bristol the mob cursed
and swore and shouted while the preacher declared the Gospel. A Catholic
priest in the congregation shouted, "Thou art a hypocrite, a devil, an
enemy to the Church."
These are a few examples of what occurred almost daily, and that for
many years. At Poole, at Lichfield, at St. Ives, at Grimsby, at Cork, at
Wenlock, at Athlone, at Dudley, and at many other places he encountered
similar opposition, until the presence of a Methodist preacher was the
signal for a mob. Many of the preachers were impressed into the army on
the pretense that their occupation was irregular and their lives
vagabondish. But wherever they went they were true to God and to the
faith as they felt it in their hearts.
The cause of all this opposition was the preaching of justification by
faith, entire sanctification, and the urging of clergy and laity to a
holy life. Thomas Olivers tells Richard Hill that the man he had
maligned was one who had published a hundred volumes, who had traveled
yearly five thousand miles, preached yearly about one thousand sermons,
visited as many sick beds as he had preached sermons, and written twice
as many letters; and who, though now between seventy and eighty years of
age, absolutely refused to abate in the smallest degree these mighty
labors; but might be seen at this very time, with his silver locks about
his ears, and with a meager, worn-out, skeleton body, smiling at storms
and tempests, at such difficulties and dangers as "I believe would be
absolutely intolerable to _you_, sir, in conjunction with any _four_ of
your most flaming ministers."
Such is John Wesley in his persecutions. We who claim to be followers of
Wesley, and who glory in the rich fruit of these unexampled labors,
sufferings, and sacrifices, might with propriety inquire whether we
would be willing to endure such toil and "despise such shame," that we
might transmit to the children of a future generation the rich
inheritance which we enjoy.
The Church needs such men in these times--genuine reformers, men who
will dare to proclaim the whole counsel of God, though for doing so they
may be maligned, traduced, misrepresented, and their names even cast out
as evil; men who will lovingly but unflinchingly face the incoming tide
of worldliness with the old Wesleyan weapons of faith and prayer until
holiness triumphs.
Writing to Alexander Mather, Wesley says: "Give me but one hundred men
who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a
straw whether they be clergymen or laymen, such alone will overthrow the
kingdom of Satan and build up the kingdom of God upon earth."
CHAPTER XI.
WESLEY AND HIS THEOLOGY.
MR. WESLEY was well versed in every phase of the theology of his times.
Indeed, he was one of the best-read men of his age. That system of
scriptural truth which he formulated has stood the test of the most
searching criticism, being bitterly assailed on all sides. His theology
has the advantage of having been forged in the hottest fires of
controversy which have been witnessed during the last two centuries. And
it is not presumption in us to say that it has revolutionized, in some
marked features, the religious opinions of orthodox Christendom. This is
manifest to all who have carefully observed the drift of religious
sentiment.
The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England seem framed to meet
different forms of religious faith, as the seventeenth and thirty-first
articles clearly show.
Among the regular clergy were many high-toned Calvinists, and nearly all
Dissenters were of the same faith.
In 1770 Wesley's Conference met, and after a long and earnest discussion
of the subject came to the decision that they had "leaned too much
toward Calvinism." When the Minutes of this Conference were made public
they created great excitement, for it was a blow at the prevailing
belief of the times. Three classes rushed to the defense of what they
regarded as truth: 1. The Calvinistic Methodists, who had been
associated with Wesley, and regarded him as their leader. 2. The Church
party, strong and influential. 3. The Dissenters; these were nearly all
Calvinists. Between these parties there had been formerly no special
sympathy, but they united to antagonize Wesley.
Against all these Wesley stood, as he says, "_Athanasius contra mundum_"
("Athanasius against the world"). With him was associated Rev. John
Fletcher, the saintly vicar of Madeley. As a controversialist he was
peerless, and as a saintly character modern times have not produced his
superior.
The conflict was long and bitter. It was conducted on the one side by
Rev. and Hon. Walter Shirley, Hon. Richard Hill, his brother, the famous
Rowland Hill, Rev. Mr. Beveridge, and Rev. Augustus Toplady; and on the
other side by Mr. Wesley, but mainly by Mr. Fletcher. It was admitted by
all fair-minded men that the Damascus blade of the hero of Madeley won
in the conflict and was master of the situation. Fletcher's _Checks to
Antinomianism_ was the result. These have stood for more than a hundred
years a bulwark against the baneful errors which they seek to overthrow.
These plumed warriors have long since adjusted their dogmatic
differences, for harmony is the law of that world in which they live.
We shall proceed to give a brief statement of the fundamental doctrines
held and advocated by Mr. Wesley, omitting any merely speculative
opinions regarded by him as nonessential:
I. THE DEITY OF CHRIST.
While Mr. Wesley had charity for doubters, he held with great firmness
_the supreme divinity and Godhead of Christ_. "The _Word existed_," he
says, "without any beginning. He was when all things began to be,
whatever had a beginning. He was the Word which the Father begat or
spoke from eternity." "The Word was with God, therefore distinct from
God the Father. The word rendered _with_ denotes a perpetual tendency,
as it were, of the Son to the Father in unity of essence. He was with
God alone, because nothing beside God had then any being. And the Word
was God--supreme, eternal, independent. There was no creature in respect
of which he could be styled God in a relative sense. Therefore he is
styled so in the absolute sense."[E]
II. THE FALL AND CORRUPTION OF MAN.
In regard to the fall and consequent corruption of human nature, Mr.
Wesley accepted the faith of the Church of England, which is as follows:
"Original, or birth, sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the
Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the corruption of the nature of
every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam,
whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own
nature is inclined to evil, and that continually." He taught that sin
was both _original_ and _actual_, sin of the _heart_ and sin of the
_life_, or _outward_ sin and _inward_ sin.
Of actual, or outward, sin he says: "Nothing is sin, strictly speaking,
but a voluntary transgression of a known law of God. Therefore, every
voluntary breach of the law of love is sin, and nothing else, if we
speak properly." Speaking of a believer being freed from the actual
commission of sin, he says: "I understand his of 'inward sin,' any
sinful temper, passion, or affection, such as pride, self-will, love of
the world." Mr. Wesley's views on this subject cannot be harmonized,
except we admit his definition of sin--sin as an _outward_ act,
expressed by the voluntary commission of sin; and sin as a _state_ or
_condition_ of the heart, expressed by the text, "All unrighteousness is
sin."
Mr. Wesley's view of sin is no Unitarian view, but sin in all its
destructive effects upon the human heart, holding it in its "unwilling
grasp;" the soul "drinking in iniquity like water;" the "soul dead in
trespasses and sin," and being "dragged at sin's chariot wheels," until
in utter despair he cries, "O, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver
me?" At this point there comes deliverance to the soul.
III. GENERAL OR UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION.
By this Mr. Wesley meant that the atonement was for each member of the
human family, except when rejected by voluntary choice. As a consequence
of this doctrine of general redemption he lays down two axioms, of which
he never loses sight in his preaching. Says Mr. Fletcher: 1. "All our
salvation is of God in Christ, and therefore of _grace_; all
opportunities, inclinations, and power to believe, being bestowed upon
us of mere grace--grace most absolutely free." 2. "He asserted with
equal confidence that, according to the Gospel dispensation, all our
damnation is of ourself, by our obstinate unbelief and avoidable
unfaithfulness, as we may neglect so great salvation." These points he
made clear from the Word of God.
It must be admitted that Calvinism has greatly changed in the last
hundred years, both in Europe and America. We doubt if any can be found
who would attempt, in these times, to defend the doctrine which Messrs.
Shirley, Hill, and Toplady attempted to defend in Wesley's time. Mr.
Toplady said: "Whatever comes to pass, comes to pass by virtue of the
absolute, omnipotent will of God, which is the primary and supreme cause
of all things." "If so, it may be objected," he says, "that whatever is,
is right. Consequences cannot be helped." "Whatever a man does," he
says, "he does necessarily, though not with any sensible compulsion; and
that we can only do what God, from eternity, willed and foreknew we
should." Surely, this does not differ from "whatsoever is, is right."
The doctrine of foreknowledge, with Mr. Toplady, included the doctrine
of election and decrees. He said: "As God does not will that each
individual of mankind should be saved, so neither did he will that
Christ should properly and immediately die for each individual of
mankind; whence it follows that, though the blood of Christ, from its
intrinsic dignity, was sufficient for the redemption of all men, yet, in
consequence of his Father's appointment, he shed it intentionally, and
therefore effectually and immediately, for the elect only."
Mr. Wesley said, in reply to these strange utterances, that their
doctrine represented Christ "as a hypocrite, a deceiver of the people,
a man void of common sincerity; for it cannot be denied that he
everywhere speaks as if he was willing that all men should be
saved--provided the possibility. Therefore, to say that he was not
willing that all men should be saved--that he had provided no such
possibility--is to represent him as a hypocrite and deceiver." "You
cannot deny," says Wesley, "that he says, 'Come unto me, all ye that
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' If you say unto
me, He calls those that cannot come, those whom he knows to be unable to
come, those whom he can make able to come, but will not, how is it
possible to describe greater insincerity? You represent him as mocking
his helpless creatures by offering what he never intended to give. You
describe him as saying one thing and meaning another--as pretending a
love which he had not. Him, in whose mouth was no guile, you make full
of deceit, void of common sincerity."
In this manner the conflict went on until the theology of the ages, on
this subject, has been revolutionized.
The Wesleyan doctrine of foreknowledge and free agency may be stated in
a few words. It is, in substance, as follows:
1. The freedom of a moral agent is freedom to follow his own choice,
where he is held responsible for his conduct.
2. The foreknowledge of God is a divine perception of what that agent
will choose to do in a given case of responsibility. In this there is no
conflict between freedom and foreknowledge.
We admit that God saw sin as a certainty, but that perception did not
make sin a certainty. The freedom of the agent does not destroy the
knowledge of God, nor does the knowledge of God destroy the freedom of
the agent. God's knowledge of the certainty does not cause the
certainty. His knowledge of what an agent will choose to do depends on
the certainty that he will do it, and until the certainty exists God
cannot know it, as neither God nor man can know anything where there is
nothing to know. The knowledge may follow after, go before, or accompany
an event, but gives no existence or character to the event, any more
than a light shining around a rock gives character or existence to the
rock.
IV. THE NEW BIRTH.
The new birth, according to Wesley, includes pardon, justification,
regeneration, and adoption. These are coetaneous--received at one and
the same time. But they are always preceded by conviction of sin,
repentance, and submission to God by faith.
Mr. Wesley says that whosoever is justified is born again, and whosoever
is born again is justified, that "both these gifts of God are given to
every believer at one and the same moment. In one point of time his sins
are blotted out, and he is born again of God."
Mr. Wesley taught that the new birth put an end to the voluntary
commission of sin. This change is really a "new creation;" it removes
the "love of sin," so that "he that is born of God does not commit sin."
Sin, though it may and does _exist_, does not reign in him who is born
of God. It has no longer dominion, though it may have a being, in his
heart, requiring a still further work of grace. This wonderful change is
effected by faith in the atoning sacrifice. It must be by faith alone.
And such a doctrine is very full of comfort.
V. THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT.
This doctrine, as well as justification by faith, was strongly contested
in Wesley's time, and the contest has not fully subsided. Many argue
that there is no _direct_ witness of the Spirit except what comes
through the _Word_, and hence is an inference which we draw by a process
of reasoning. The Word of God, it is claimed, gives us certain marks of
the new birth. We recognize such internal evidence, hence we infer that
we are justified, or born again. This is Wesley's _indirect_ witness, or
the witness of our own spirit. But he claimed that God, by his own
Spirit, gives us a _direct_ witness; that the "Spirit of God witnesses
with _our_ spirit that we are the children of God." And here is his
incomparable definition of this soul-cheering truth: "By the witness of
the Spirit I mean an inward impression of the soul, whereby the Spirit
of God immediately and directly witnesses to my spirit that I am a child
of God; that Jesus Christ hath loved me and given himself for me; that
all my sins have been blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God."
Twenty years later, speaking of this definition, he said: "I see no
cause to retract any of these suggestions. Neither do I conceive how any
of those expressions may be altered so as to make them more
intelligible."
This constitutes the _direct_ witness of the Spirit.
The _indirect_ witness, or the witness of our own spirit, including the
fruit of the Spirit, is subsequent to this direct witness. The one is
the tree, and the other its fruit.
VI. FINAL PERSEVERANCE OF THE SAINTS.
While Calvinism has modified its faith in regard to many things, it
still adheres to its original belief in this dogma. It is stated in
these words in their Confession of Faith: "They whom God has accepted in
his beloved, effectually called, sanctified by his Spirit, can neither
totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall
certainly persevere to the end, and be eternally saved." It is further
declared that "this perseverance of the saints depends not upon their
own will, but upon the immutability of the decree of election," etc.
They say, also, that "the perseverance of the saints is one of the
Articles by which the creed of the followers of Calvin is distinguished
from that of Arminius."
Mr. Wesley as well as Mr. Fletcher opposed this doctrine. They declared
with all the force of scriptural authority that "if the righteous turn
away from his righteousness and commit iniquity, his righteousness shall
no longer be remembered, but for his iniquity that he hath committed he
shall die for it." They insisted that if "every branch in Christ that
did not bear fruit was to be cut off and cast into the fire and burned,"
the apostasy of a believer may be final. They insisted that "if we sin
willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there
remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, but a fearful looking for of
judgment and fiery indignation," etc.; that we might so far backslide as
that another "might take our crown." They went everywhere declaring that
the only safeguard against final apostasy was to be "faithful unto
death."
VII. ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION OR CHRISTIAN PERFECTION.
Mr. Wesley declared that this was "the grand depositum which God had
lodged with the people called Methodists, and for the sake of
propagating this chiefly he appears to have raised them up." His
opponents charged him with preaching perfection. They said, derisively,
"This is Mr. Wesley's doctrine! He preaches perfection!" "He does,"
responds Wesley, "yet this is not _his_ doctrine any more than it is
yours, or anyone's else that is a minister of Christ. For it is his
doctrine, peculiarly, emphatically his; it is the doctrine of Jesus
Christ. These are his words, not mine: 'Ye shall therefore be perfect,
as your Father who is in heaven is perfect.' And who says ye shall not;
or, at least, not till your soul is separated from your body?"
It is true Wesley used the term "perfection," but it was not the only
word he used to set forth this truth, but such terms as "perfect love,"
"full salvation," "full sanctification," "the whole image of God,"
"second change," "clean heart," "pure heart," "loving God with all the
heart," etc. He says: "I have no particular fondness for the term
perfection. It seldom occurs in my preaching or writing. It is my
opponents who thrust it upon me continually, and ask what I mean by it.
I do not build any doctrine thereupon, nor undertake critically to
explain it." "What is the meaning of perfection? is another question.
That it is a scriptural term is undeniable; therefore none ought to
object to the term, whatever they may as to this or that explication of
it." "But I still think that perfection is only another term for
holiness, or the image of God in man. 'God made man perfect,' I think,
is just the same as 'He made him holy,' or 'in his own image.'"
It does not come within our plan or purpose to give a detailed
exposition of Christian perfection, but simply to call the reader's
attention to the truth as the central doctrine in Mr. Wesley's system of
religious faith. With him it was deliverance from _inbred_, as well as
_actual_, sin. It was not sin _repressed_, but sin exterminated,
deliverance from sin. His standing definition was the following:
"Sanctification, in a proper sense, is an instantaneous deliverance from
all sin, and includes an instantaneous power, then given, always to
cleave to God. Yet this sanctification does not include a power never to
think a useless thought, nor ever speak a useless word. I myself believe
that such a perfection is inconsistent with living in a corruptible
body; for this makes it impossible always to think aright. While we
breathe we shall more or less mistake. If, therefore, Christian
perfection includes this, we must not expect it until after death." He
says again that "the perfection he believes in is 'love dwelling alone
in the heart.'" It is "deliverance from evil desires and evil tempers"
as well as from "evil words and works." "I want you to be all love. This
is the perfection I believe and teach. And this perfection is consistent
with a thousand nervous disorders, which that high-strained perfection
is not. Indeed, my judgment is (in this case particularly) to overdo is
to undo; and that to set perfection too high (so high as no man that we
ever heard or read of attained) is the most effectual (because
unsuspected) way of driving it out of the world."[F] "Nor did I ever say
or mean any more by perfection than the loving God with all our heart,
and serving him with all our strength; for it might be attended with
worse consequences than you seem to be aware of. If there be a mistake,
it is far more dangerous on the one side than on the other. If I set the
mark too high, I drive men into needless fears; if you set it too low,
you drive them into hell fire."[G]
It is not for us to defend these views, but simply to record them, as
the theological faith of the founder of Methodism, and that which the
Methodist Church in all the world has professed to believe and teach.
VIII. THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD.
Mr. Wesley taught the doctrine of the general resurrection of the human
body. "The plain notion of a resurrection," he says, "requires that the
selfsame body that died should rise again. Nothing can be said to be
raised again but that body that died. If God gives to our souls a new
body, this cannot be called a resurrection of the body, because the word
plainly implies the fresh production of what was before."[H]
While he holds that the same body is to be raised, it is not a
_natural_, but a _spiritual_, body. "It is sown in this world a merely
_animal body_--maintained by food, sleep, and air, like the body of
brutes. But it is raised of a more refined contexture, needing none of
these animal refreshments, and endued with qualities of a spiritual
nature like the angels of God." "We must be entirely changed, for such
flesh and blood as we are clothed with now cannot enter into that
kingdom which is wholly _spiritual_."[I] He speaks of the _place_ from
which the dead rise as evidence of its being the same body that died
(John v, 28). "The hour is coming when all that are in their graves
shall hear his voice and shall come forth." "Now, if the same body do
not rise again, what need is there of opening the graves at the end of
the world?" The graves can give up no bodies but those which were laid
in them. If we were not to rise with the very same bodies that died,
then they might rest forever.
Mr. Wesley taught, in harmony with the Scriptures, the doctrine of
IX. GENERAL JUDGMENT.
This, Mr. Wesley claimed, would take place at the _second coming of
Christ_, at the end of the world, "when the Son of man shall come in his
glory." "The dead of all nations will be gathered before him." This he
calls "the day of the Lord, the space from the creation of men upon the
earth to the end of all things;" "the days of the sons of men, the time
that is now passing over us. When this is ended the day of the Lord
begins." "The time when we are to give this account" is at the second
advent, "when the great white throne comes down from heaven, and he who
sitteth thereon, from whose face the heavens and earth shall flee away."
It is "then the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books
will be opened." "Before all these the whole human race shall appear,"
etc.[J]
X. ETERNAL REWARD AND PUNISHMENT.
Mr. Wesley taught that men would be both punished and rewarded at the
judgment, and that both reward and punishment would be eternal. "Either
the punishment is strictly eternal, or the reward is not, the very same
expression being applied to the former as to the latter. It is not only
particularly observable here (1) that the punishment lasts as long as
the reward, but (2) that this punishment is so far from ceasing at the
end of the world that it does not begin till then."[K] "The rewards will
never come to an end unless God comes to an end and his truth fail. The
wicked, meantime, shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that
forget God."
These are the doctrines of universal Methodism, as expressed in its
creed. Methodism accepts the doctrines inculcated by John Wesley.
Our space does not allow us to do more than to state these doctrines in
the briefest form. Wherever they are faithfully preached they become
effectual to the saving of men. It is hoped that Methodism will abide by
its doctrinal _creed_, for by it all its victories have been achieved.
CHAPTER XII.
WESLEY AS A MAN.
WE are always more or less curious about the personal appearance of a
distinguished character--the eye, the voice, the gesture, etc.
We are told that Mr. Wesley's figure was, in all respects, remarkable.
He was low of stature, with habit of body almost the reverse of
corpulent, indicative of strict temperance and continual exercise. His
step was firm, and his appearance vigorous and masculine; his face, even
in old age, is described as remarkably fine--clear, smooth, with an
aquiline nose, the brightest and most piercing eye that could be
conceived, and a freshness of complexion rarely found in a man of his
years, giving to him a venerable and interesting appearance. In him
cheerfulness was mingled with gravity, sprightliness with serene
tranquillity. His countenance at times, especially while preaching,
produced a lasting impression upon the hearers. They were not able to
dispossess themselves of his striking expression.
While preaching at Langhamrow a young man who was full of hilarity and
mirth had, on his way to church, kept saying to his companions, with an
air of carelessness, "This fine Mr. Wesley I shall hear, and get
converted." He did hear him, but he had never gazed upon such a
countenance before. It put him in a more serious frame of mind, and for
a long time, day and night, whether at home or abroad, that wonderful
countenance was before him so full of solemnity and benignity. It was
the means of his conversion, and he became a worthy church member and
useful class leader.
In dress Mr. Wesley was the pattern of neatness and simplicity, wearing
a narrow plaited stock, and coat with small upright collar, with no silk
or velvet on any part of his apparel. This, added to a head as white as
snow, gave to the beholder an idea of something primitive and apostolic.
The following description of him is given by one who, though not a
Methodist, could properly appreciate true greatness: "Very lately I had
an opportunity for some days together to observe Mr. Wesley with
attention. I endeavored to consider him not so much with the eye of a
friend as with the impartiality of a philosopher. I must declare every
hour I spent in his company afforded me fresh reasons for esteem and
veneration. So fine an old man I never saw. The happiness of his mind
beamed forth in his countenance. Every look showed how fully he enjoyed
the remembrance of a life well spent. Wherever he was he diffused a
portion of his own felicity. Easy and affable in his demeanor, he
accommodated himself to every sort of company, and showed how happily
the most finished courtesy may be blended with the most perfect piety."
In social life Mr. Wesley was a finished Christian gentleman, and this
was seen in the perfect ease with which he accommodated himself to both
high and low, rich and poor. He was placid, benevolent, full of rich
anecdotes, wit, and wisdom. In all these his conversation was not often
equaled. He was never trifling, but always cheerful. Such interviews
were always concluded by a verse or two of some hymn, adapted to what
had been said, and prayer.
There was no evidence of _fret_. He used to say, "I dare no more fret
than curse or swear." "His sprightliness among his friends never left
him, and was as conspicuous at eighty-seven as at seventeen." He was at
home everywhere, in the mansion or in the cottage, and was equally
courteous to all. The young drew to him and he to them. "I reverence the
young," he said, "because they may be useful after I am dead." Bradburn,
one of his most intimate friends, said: "His modesty prevented him
saying much concerning his own religious feelings. In public he hardly
ever spoke of the state of his own soul; but in 1781 he told me that
his experience might, almost at any time, be expressed in the following
lines:
"'O Thou who camest from above,
The pure celestial fire to impart,
Kindle a flame of sacred love
On the mean altar of my heart.
"'There let it for thy glory burn,
With inextinguishable blaze;
And trembling to its source return,
With humble prayer and fervent praise.'"
This may not be sufficiently definite for some, but it is quite as much
so as genuine Christian modesty would approve. But it is evident that he
always possessed the "pure, celestial fire," and that its
"inextinguishable blaze" bore him on to deeds of heroic daring
unparalleled in modern times.
CHAPTER XIII.
WESLEY AS A PREACHER.
MR. WESLEY, it has been said, "was no stormy and dramatic Luther. He was
no Cromwell, putting his enemies to the sword in the name of the Lord.
He was no Knox, tearing down churches to get rid of their members. He
was no Calvin; he did not burn anybody for disagreeing with him."
Mr. Wesley was styled "the mover of men's consciences." His preaching
was simple--a child could easily understand him. There were no
far-fetched terms, no soaring among the clouds. All was simple, artless,
and clear. He declares that he could no more preach a fine sermon than
he could wear a fine coat.
George Whitefield was regarded as the prince of modern eloquence. Dr.
Franklin (no mean judge) accorded him this rank. Charles Wesley was but
little inferior to Whitefield as a pulpit orator; while Fletcher was not
inferior to either. Mr. Wesley regarded him as superior to Whitefield.
"He had," says Wesley, "a more striking person, equally good breeding,
and winning address; together with a rich flow of fancy, a strong
understanding, and a far greater treasure of learning both in language,
philosophy, philology, and divinity, and above all (which I can speak
with greater assurance, because I had a thorough knowledge both of one
and the other), a more deep and constant communion with the Father, and
with his Son, Jesus Christ."
These were mighty men. The multitudes that listened to them were swayed
by their eloquence and power as is the forest by a rushing, mighty wind.
Their earnest appeals drew floods of tears from eyes unaccustomed to
weep.
We are not informed that Mr. Wesley often wept while preaching, and yet
no such effects were produced by Whitefield's preaching as were
witnessed under Wesley's. Mr. Southey admits that the sermons of Wesley
were attended with greater and more lasting effect than were the sermons
of Whitefield. Men fell under his words like soldiers slain in battle.
While he was calm, collected, deliberate, and logical, he was more
powerful in moving the sensibilities as well as the understanding of his
hearers than any other man in England. Marvelous were the physical
effects produced by his preaching.
We are told that "his attitude in the pulpit was graceful and easy; his
action calm and natural, yet pleasing and expressive," and his command
over an audience was very remarkable. He always faced the mob, and was
generally victorious at such times. In the midst of a mob he says: "I
called for a chair; the winds were hushed, and all was calm and still;
my heart was filled with love, my eyes with tears, and my mouth with
arguments. They were amazed, they were ashamed, they were melted down,
they devoured every word." There must have been, in such preaching, that
which seldom falls to our lot to hear. Beattie once heard him preach at
Aberdeen one of his ordinary sermons. He remarked that "it was not a
masterly sermon, yet none but a master could have preached it."
The account of Wesley preaching at Epworth on his father's tombstone is
inspiring. He was refused the church where his honored father had
preached thirty-nine years, and for three successive nights he stood
upon his father's tombstone and preached to a large company of people.
"A living son," says Tyerman, "preaching on his dead father's grave,
because the parish priest refused to allow him to officiate in the dead
father's church." "I am well persuaded," said Wesley, "that I did more
good to my Lincolnshire parishioners by preaching three days on my
father's tomb than I did by preaching three years in his pulpit." During
the preaching of these sermons, it is said, the people wept aloud on
every side, and Wesley's voice at times was drowned by the cries of
penitents, and many in that old churchyard found peace with God. On
another evening many dropped as dead men under the word. A clergyman
who heard Wesley preach on that occasion, in writing to him, said: "Your
presence created an awe, as if you were an inhabitant of another world."
Who remembers the name of Rector Romley, that ecclesiastical pretender
who arrogated to himself such authority? His name has long since passed
into comparative oblivion, while that of Wesley, whom he despised,
shines as a star of the first magnitude, and shall shine on until the
heavens shall pass away. A few years later Romley lost his voice, became
a drunkard, then a lunatic, and thus died.
A late writer, not a Methodist, gives a glowing description of Wesley
and his conflicts:
He was the peer, in intellectual endowments, of any
literary character of that most literary period. No
gownsman of the university, no lawned and mitered
prelate of his time, was intellectually the superior
of this itinerant Methodist--a bishop more truly than
the Archprelate of Canterbury himself in everything
but the empty name. The hosts of literary pamphleteers
and controversialists that rained their attacks upon
his system, in showers, were made to feel the keenness
of his logic and the staggering weight of his
responsive blows. It is a fine sight to look upon,
from this distance, that of this single modest man, an
unpretentious knight of true religion and consecrated
learning, beset for forty years by scores, yes,
hundreds, of assailants, armed in all the ostentation
of churchly dignity, shooting at him their arrows of
tracts and sermons; newspaper writers pouring upon him
their ceaseless squibs; malicious critics assailing
his motives and his methods with innuendoes and false
suggestions; ponderous professors tilting at him with
their heavier lances of books and stately treatises;
and he, alone, giving more than thrust for thrust, and
his brother Charles furnishing the inspiring
accompaniment of martial music until one man had
chased a thousand, and two have put ten thousand to
flight.[L]
Speaking of the physical effects produced by Mr. Wesley's preaching, the
same writer says:
Wesley is in Bristol for nine months--such a nine
months Bristol never saw before. No! nor England, nor
the world since the day of Pentecost. Wesley's notions
of propriety were destined to be still further
shocked. Among the multitudes that thronged around him
strange physical demonstrations began to appear. They
shocked even Whitefield when he heard of them, and he
remonstrated with Wesley for seeming to permit or
encourage them. Men were smitten by his words as a
field of standing corn by a tempest. Intense physical
agony prostrated them upon the ground. They stood
trembling, with fixed eyeballs staring as though they
were looking into eternal horror. Some, who seemed
utterly incapable of anything like enthusiasm, were
struck as dead. Others beat their breasts and begged
for forgiveness for their sins. Others were actually
torn and maimed in unconscious convulsions. The story
of the demoniac in the gospels was, to all
appearances, realized over and over.
And again, under his assurance of full forgiveness and
free salvation, the storm would give way to a calm,
and these same persons would be at peace, clothed and
in their right minds. Wesley was helpless; never was
more honest and straightforward in generous work. He
was himself amazed, almost terrified; but, "I have
come to the conclusion," he says, "that we must all
suffer God to carry on his own work in the way that
pleaseth him. I am not anxious to account for this."
Wesley's attitude was the right one. Wesley was
preaching to men and women who were densely ignorant,
in many cases, of the nature of sin, and of the story
of God's redemptive mercy. His words to them were as
truly the opening of an apocalypse as when John saw
the vision of his Lord, and "fell at his feet as
dead."
No wonder such signal effects moved England, Ireland, and Scotland, and,
in many instances, America.
The venerable Rev. Thomas Jackson says: "No man was accustomed to
address larger multitudes or with greater success, and it may be fairly
questioned whether any minister in modern ages has been instrumental in
effecting a greater number of conversions. He possessed all the
essential elements of a great preacher, and in nothing was he inferior
to his eminent friend and contemporary, George Whitefield, except in
voice and manner. In respect of matter, language, and arrangement, his
sermons were vastly superior to those of Mr. Whitefield. Those who judge
Wesley's ministry from the sermons which he preached and published in
the decline of life greatly mistake his real character. Till he was
enfeebled by age his discourses were not at all remarkable for their
brevity. They were often extended to a considerable length. Wesley the
preacher was tethered by no lines of written preparation and verbal
recollection; he spoke with extraordinary power of utterance out of the
fullness of his heart."
Dr. Rigg says: "In regard to Wesley in his early Oxford days, calm,
serene, methodical as Wesley was, there was a deep, steadfast fire of
earnest purpose about him; and notwithstanding the smallness of his
stature there was an elevation of character and of bearing visible to
all with whom he had intercourse, which gave him a wonderful power of
command, however quiet were his words, and however placid his
deportment. But the extraordinary power of his preaching, while it owed
something, no doubt, to this tone and presence of calm, unconscious
authority, was due mainly, essentially, to the searching and importunate
closeness and fidelity with which he dealt with the consciences of his
hearers, and the passionate vehemence with which he urged and entreated
them to turn to Christ and be saved. His words went with a sudden and
startling shock straight home into the core of the guilty sinner's
consciousness and heart."
Dr. Abel Stevens says: "As a preacher he remains a problem to us. It is
at least difficult to explain, at this late day, the secret of his great
power in the pulpit. Aside from the divine influence which is pledged to
all faithful ministers, there must have been some peculiar power in his
address which the records of the times have failed to describe; his
action was calm and natural, yet pleasing and expressive; his voice not
loud, but clear, agreeable, and masculine; his style neat and
perspicuous."
Cowper says he
"Could fetch the records from earlier age,
Or from philosophy's enlightened page
His rich materials, and regale your ear
With strains it was a privilege to hear.
Yet, above all, his luxury supreme,
And his chief glory, was the Gospel theme:
There he was copious as old Greece or Rome,
His happy eloquence seemed there at home;
Ambitious not to shine or to excel,
But to treat justly what he loved so well."
Dr. Rigg says: "In his more intense utterances logic and passion were
fused into a white heat of mingled argument, denunciation, and appeal,
often of the most personal searchingness, often overwhelming in its
vehement home thrusts."
Dr. Whitehead says: "Wesley's style was marked with brevity and
perspicuity. He never lost sight of the rule laid down by Horace:
'Concise your diction, let your sense be clear,
Not with a weight of words fatigue the ear.'
His words were pure, proper to the subject, and precise in their
meaning."
Mr. Wesley studied human character, and sought to adapt his preaching to
the masses. One day he was passing Billingsgate market, with Bradford,
while two of the women were quarreling furiously. His companion urged
him to pass on, but Wesley replied, "Stay, Sammy, stay and learn how to
preach."
CHAPTER XIV.
WESLEY AS A REFORMER.
SLAVERY.
THOSE moral reforms which have shaken the nations and in some cases
revolutionized governments were scarcely known in the days of Wesley. He
saw the coming storm and blew a trumpet-blast which gave no uncertain
sound. In some of these reforms he was a hundred years in advance of his
time.
[Illustration: WESLEY'S TEA-POT.]
[Illustration: WESLEY'S BIBLE AND CASE.]
Slavery, in Wesley's time, was strongly supported by the English
government. She had enriched herself from the African slave trade. Her
great maritime cities were built on the bones, sinews, and flesh,
cemented by the blood, of oppressed bondmen. To oppose slavery was to
oppose the government. Wesley met this gigantic evil with Christian
courage. What was true of England was also true of her colonies. He
united with Sharp, Clarkson, Wilberforce, and others to oppose the evil.
He represented the slave trade as "that execrable sum of all villainies,
commonly called the slave trade." American slavery he declared was "the
vilest that ever saw the sun." No addresses delivered on the subject,
during the days of the greatest antislavery excitement, exceeded in
severity those which fell from the lips and were produced by the pen of
John Wesley. His _Thoughts on Slavery_ was the keynote of the movement.
Wesley's last letter, written only four days before his death, was
addressed to Wilberforce, urging him to persevere in the work. It is as
follows:
LONDON, February 26, 1791.
DEAR SIR: Unless the divine Power has raised you up to
be an _Athanasius contra mundum_ (Athanasius against
the world), I see not how you can go through your
glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable
villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England,
and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for
this very thing, you will be worn out by the
opposition of men and devils. But "if God be for you,
who can be against you?" Are all of them together
stronger than God? O, "be not weary in welldoing." Go
on, in the name of God, and in the power of his might,
till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw
the sun) shall vanish away before it.
Reading this morning a tract written by a poor
African, I was particularly struck by this
circumstance--that a man who has a black skin, being
wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no
redress; it being a law, in all our colonies, that the
oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What
villainy is this!
That He who has guided you from your youth up may
continue to strengthen you in this and all things is
the prayer, dear sir, of
Your affectionate servant,
JOHN WESLEY.
He represents the slave trade as exceeding in barbarity whatever
Christian slaves suffered in Mohammedan countries.
Whitefield's letter to Wesley, in 1751, is a clear defense of slavery in
the colonies. He quotes Abraham, who had slaves "bought with his money"
and "born in his house." The same argument was employed in later years.
Whitefield added to his approval of the slave trade the fact that he
became himself a slaveholder. At the time of his death, in 1770, he was
the owner of seventy-five slaves, who were connected with his Orphan
House plantation, near Savannah, Ga. It is not surprising that God
should have swept the whole concern, by fire and flood, from the face of
the earth.
"Let it be noted," says Mr. Tyerman, "that besides all his other honors
John Wesley, the poor, persecuted Methodist, was one of the first
advocates on behalf of the enthralled African that England had, and
that, sixty years before slavery was abolished in the dominions of Great
Britain, he denounced the thing in the strongest terms it was possible
to employ." Mr. Wesley's _Thoughts on Slavery_, an octavo of fifty-three
pages, issued in 1774, did more to awaken England to the horrors of the
African slave trade than any other work on the subject. The writer says,
"No more severe arraignment of slavery than this was ever written." This
American scourge, through the influence of Wesley's early American
preachers, who caught their inspiration from his _Thoughts_, felt the
force of his burning words until that form of slavery, which he declared
to be "the vilest that ever saw the sun," was a thing of the past. For
two hundred and more years it drifted down, gradually, like other forms
of barbarism, into the clear light of a better civilization, to be
finally put to death by the Gospel of Methodism. It is true that _Uncle
Tom's Cabin_ did much, but Wesley's _Thoughts_ prepared the way for this
wonderful book. Mr. Wesley must ever be known as the man through whose
influence slavery found a grave, from which Heaven forbid it should ever
have a resurrection!
TEMPERANCE.
In regard to the temperance reform Mr. Wesley was as fully pronounced as
on the subject of slavery. Liquor drinking was practiced by all classes,
from the archbishop to the meanest street scavenger. Ministers by the
hundred drank to intoxication, and in their drunken sprees would head
mobs in their assaults on Wesley and his helpers. Wesley thundered away
at liquor selling and drinking like a modern prohibitionist. Take the
following from one of his sermons as an example:
Neither may we gain by hurting our neighbor in his
body. Therefore we may not sell anything which tends
to impair his health. Such is eminently all that
liquid fire called drams of spirituous liquors. It is
true they may have a place in medicine--may be used in
some bodily disorders--although there would rarely be
occasion for them were it not for the unskillfulness
of the practitioner. Therefore such as prepare and
sell them only for this end may keep their conscience
clean. But who are they who prepare and sell them only
for this end? Do you know ten distillers in England?
Then excuse these. But all who sell them in the common
way, to any that will buy, are poisoners in general.
They murder his majesty's subjects by wholesale;
neither do their eyes pity or spare. They drive them
to hell like sheep. And what is their gain? Is it not
the blood of these men? Who, then, would enjoy their
large estate and sumptuous palaces? A curse is in the
midst of them. A curse cleaves to the stones, the
timbers, the furniture of them. The curse of God is in
their gardens, their walks, their groves; a fire that
burns to the nethermost hell! Blood, blood, is there!
The foundation, the walls, the roof, are stained with
blood! And canst thou hope, O man of blood, though
thou art "clothed in scarlet and fine linen, and
farest sumptuously every day"--canst thou hope to
deliver thy fields of blood to the third generation?
Not so! There is a God in heaven; therefore thy name
shall be blotted out. Like as those whom thou hast
destroyed, body and soul, thy memory shall perish with
thee.[M]
He introduced into his Discipline a rule prohibiting the "buying or
selling of spirituous liquors, or drinking them, unless in cases of
extreme necessity." He went for "prohibiting forever, making a full end
of that bane of health, that destroyer of strength, of life, and
virtue--distilling." These are his own words. He was a prohibitionist in
principle, and in this respect was in advance of many would-be
temperance men of these times. To one of his preachers he says: "Touch
no dram. It is a liquid fire. It is a sure, though slow, poison. It saps
the very spring of life."
TOBACCO.
Mr. Wesley sought a reformation on the tobacco question. He believed
that the use of the weed was unchristian. He exhorts his people: "Use no
tobacco. It is an uncleanly and unwholesome self-indulgence; and the
more customary it is the more resolutely should you break off from every
degree of that evil custom. Let Christians be in this bondage no longer.
Assert your liberty, and that all at once; nothing will be done by
degrees."[N]
Such were the teachings of John Wesley on these subjects--teachings
which we regard as very remarkable for those times, and fully up to the
present.
JOHN WESLEY AND JOHN HOWARD MEET.
In 1787 Mr. Wesley met John Howard, the father of prison reform. He
says: "I had the pleasure of a conversation with Mr. Howard, I think one
of the greatest men in Europe. Nothing but the almighty power of God
can enable him to go through his difficult and dangerous employment. But
what can harm us if God be on our side?" He says again: "God has raised
him up to be a blessing to mankind."
FEMALE PREACHERS.
It is true that Wesley did not believe that female preaching was
authorized by the New Testament, except under extraordinary
circumstances. He tells Sarah Crosby that he thinks her case rests on
her having an "extraordinary call." He was persuaded, also, that every
local preacher had a similar call. If it were not so, he could not
countenance their preaching at all. "Therefore I do not wonder if
several things occur therein which do not fall under ordinary rules of
discipline. St. Paul's ordinary rule was, 'I permit not a woman to speak
in the congregation;' yet in extraordinary cases he makes a few
exceptions, at Corinth in particular."
Mrs. Crosby said: "My soul was much comforted in speaking to the people,
as the Lord has removed all my scruples respecting the propriety of my
acting thus publicly."
"I think you have not gone too far," said Wesley, though she had
preached to hundreds. "You could not well do less. All you can do more
is, when you meet again tell them simply: 'You lay me under a great
difficulty. The Methodists do not allow of women preachers; neither do I
take upon me any such character. But I will just nakedly tell you what
is in my heart.' I do not see that you have broken any law. Go on,
calmly and steadily." She obeyed, and went on till death. Others
followed in the footsteps of Sarah Crosby. Mrs. Fletcher preached, and
Hester Ann Rogers really did the same.
It is true that female preaching was never sanctioned by the Wesleyan
Conference, but it was substantially practiced to the end of Wesley's
life. He broke the bands which had bound women, and which in many
Churches bind them still, and allowed her to be a public advocate of
spiritual religion--to tell what great things God had done for the soul.
Speaking of Susannah Wesley, a recent writer of the Congregational
Church says: "The Methodist Church owes its system of doctrine quite as
much, I think, to Susannah Wesley as to her illustrious son. To the
instruction of a woman she added the logic of a gownsman and the love of
a saint. Finer letters were never written. It is not to be wondered at
that Methodists have been pioneers in the enfranchisement of female
speech, that they have believed in it and practiced it from the first.
They would have disgraced their origin otherwise."
It will be seen that Methodism has inaugurated, really, all the great
moral reforms of the last hundred and fifty years. The great missionary
movement, which has sent evangelistic agencies into all the earth, had
little or no life when Methodism was born. Since that time, what hath
God wrought!
CHAPTER XV.
WESLEY AND AMERICAN METHODISM PRIOR TO 1766.
THE real advent of Methodism into America is a subject demanding special
consideration. It has been generally supposed that its first
introduction was in 1766 by Barbara Heck and Philip Embury, who
inaugurated religious services at that time in the city of New York. But
it has always seemed to us that Methodism was introduced much earlier.
There had been no less than five members of the "Holy Club"--the Oxford
Methodists' fraternity--preaching in America prior to 1766, namely, John
and Charles Wesley, Benjamin Ingham, Charles Delamot, and George
Whitefield. Whatever may be said of the four former, it is certain that
George Whitefield was here, from 1740, preaching as a flaming Methodist
evangelist from Maine to Georgia. These men all accepted Wesley as their
leader, and looked to him for counsel.
Mr. Whitefield's first visit to America was undertaken with the express
purpose of assisting Wesley in his great work. But Wesley had left the
field before he arrived. George Whitefield was an Oxford Methodist, a
member of the Holy Club, and possessed an undying love for Wesley. He
was known in Georgia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and New
England as a Methodist, and until, in after years, he drew away from
Wesley for a time, on some doctrinal question, he was in fullest accord
with him. Whatever he did in America during his first and second visits
was done as a Methodist. It must be confessed that Whitefield did a
marvelous work in all parts of the country years prior to 1766. He was
known in New England as a Methodist, and the first Methodist chapel ever
erected in this land was built in Boston, the land of the Pilgrims.
Charles Wesley stopped in Boston several weeks, on his way from Georgia
to England, and preached several times in Dr. Cutler's Church on Salem
Street, known as Christ Church, and also in King's Chapel. He also was
known as an Oxford Methodist. When Whitefield first entered New England
he had not separated from Wesley. He had been to England since his first
visit, and had been led, like the Wesleys, into the experience of
salvation. He at once entered into their labors, and had inaugurated
outdoor preaching at Bristol. It was not until he had visited New
England a second, perhaps a third, time, and had adopted the views of
Calvin as held by New England divines, that he drew away for a time
from Wesley. In Pennsylvania, in New Jersey, and in New York God wrought
wonders by this flaming Methodist evangelist.
The Puritans, who first settled New England, held orthodox views on the
subject of justification by faith and regeneration by the Holy Spirit.
This was their faith for more than half a century. But when they began
to decline, legal forms were substituted for spiritual power. The
"halfway covenant," as it was called, was introduced, and under it
persons became members of the Church without conversion, and it was not
even deemed an essential qualification for a minister of the Gospel that
he be converted. The Church and State were united, and the courts by
legal enactments compelled every man, no matter what his religious
faith, to sustain a Church whose creed he did not believe. The same
state of things existed in Virginia, where Episcopal rule obtained. The
whole land seemed a "valley of dry bones." There was one light in New
England. In the obscure town of Northampton Jonathan Edwards was
preaching with marvelous effect, and his influence was felt all along
the valley of the Connecticut; but it had not reached Boston. There was
one man in Boston who waited for the salvation of Israel--Rev. Benjamin
Coleman, pastor of Brattle Street Church. He had heard of the work in
Northampton, and also of Whitefield, the youthful evangelist in the
South, and longed to witness the like in Boston before he went hence,
for he was now seventy years of age. He wrote to Whitefield at Savannah;
the latter, anxious to visit the land of the Pilgrims, came in the
demonstration of the Spirit, and such a revival as attended his ministry
New England had never witnessed. A writer of some note gives the
following description of his coming: "At the close of a beautiful autumn
day, in 1740, Whitefield had arrived within full view of the city of
Boston. Its spires were gleaming in the rays of the setting sun. Its
neat, white dwellings were reflected from the mirror surface of the
quiet waters, which nearly surrounded the whole site. Its attendant
villages loomed up around the whole horizon. Withdrawing his eyes from
the first glance at the city, which lay in full view from the hill on
which he stood, he looked down the road before him, and saw a multitude
of people--officers of the government, ministers of the Gospel,
citizens, ladies, and children--who had all come forth to meet the
accomplished stranger, and conduct him, amidst smiles and blessings, to
the city. It must have been an interesting hour to the youthful hero of
the cross. Three thousand miles from his native land, among entire
strangers, he was welcomed to the renowned city of the Puritans with
demonstrations of honor which Alexander, or Cæsar, or Napoleon might
have coveted. He was coming among them, not the gray-haired veteran hero
of a thousand battles, not the brave warrior from the fields of victory,
not the monarch with patronage and power in his hand, but the
sincere-hearted, pure-minded, and eloquent-tongued Methodist missionary,
who had drank from the pure fountain of evangelical truth, and had now
come to lead the thirsty Pilgrims of New England to the garden of the
Lord,
"'Where living waters gently pass,
And full salvation flows.'"
It must be remembered that this most remarkable man was but twenty-six
years old, and yet England and America had been thrilled by the power of
his unexampled eloquence.
The next day he preached in Brattle Street Church, then in other
churches, hoping to afford the people an opportunity to hear. But the
multitudes were so great that no church could accommodate them, so he
resorted to the open field, as usual. Boston Common was thronged with
thousands, while three times each day he preached to them with an
eloquence which Boston had never before heard. Hundreds were won to
Jesus, and many ministers were aroused and made clearly conscious of
their need of salvation. He visited some of the adjacent towns,
especially Cambridge. His eloquent appeals aroused Harvard College from
its sleep of a century, and there occurred in that institution what
never happened before or since--a genuine revival of religion. It was a
wonder then; it would be more so now! Dr. Coleman, a graduate of
Harvard, wrote at the time: "The college is entirely changed. The
students are full of God, and will, I trust, come out blessings to their
generation. Many of them appear truly born again, and have proved happy
instruments of conversion to their fellows. The voice of prayer and of
praise fills their chambers; and sincerity, fervency, and joy, with
seriousness of heart, set visibly upon their faces. I was told yesterday
that not seven out of the hundred in attendance remained unaffected."
"That was," says one writer, "a strange day for Harvard."
This was the introduction of Methodism into New England, and Whitefield
at the time was a Methodist evangelist.
We have said that the first Methodist chapel ever erected in America was
built in Boston. Where is the proof? We submit the following facts:
While attending the Methodist Ecumenical Conference in London, in 1881,
Rev. Dr. Allison, of Nova Scotia, had occasion to examine the archives
of the "Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,"
under whose auspices both Wesley and Whitefield came to America. Dr.
Allison tells us that, in the course of his examination, he found
letters written by John Wesley while in Georgia. He discovered, also, a
most important letter written by Dr. Cutler, of Boston, dated "Boston,
Massachusetts Bay Colony, July, 1750," in which he says: "There are in
Boston at this time fourteen independent chapels and one or two
churches." He further adds: "There is, in an obscure alley, a Baptist
chapel, _and just now there has been built a Methodist chapel, a form of
religion which I think will not soon die_" (Conference report, p. 93).
But who was this Dr. Cutler who wrote the letter from Boston in 1750? He
was Rev. Timothy Cutler, first rector of Christ Church, Salem Street,
Boston. He was president of Yale College as early as 1720. In 1722 he,
with six others, mostly Congregationalists, withdrew, and united with
the Episcopal Church. He immediately sailed for England, where he
received Episcopal ordination and the title of Doctor in Divinity, and
was sent by the "Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts" as a missionary to Boston. It was under his ministry that Christ
Church was erected, and it was in this church that Charles Wesley, an
Oxford Methodist, preached in 1736 several times, during his detention
here while on his way from Georgia to England. He speaks of preaching
in Dr. Cutler's church as well as in King's Chapel.
[Illustration: ST. ANDREW'S CHURCH AT EPWORTH.]
[Illustration: EPWORTH MEMORIAL CHURCH AT CLEVELAND, O.]
Here is this Episcopal rector, in 1750, eighteen years before a
Methodist chapel was erected in New York or Sam's Creek, Maryland,
reporting there was then a Methodist chapel in Boston! Dr. Cutler says
it "had been built."
Who built this chapel, whether English Methodist soldiers or some of
Whitefield's followers, who might have been pressed out of the dead
churches, we do not know, but it was a _Methodist_ chapel. It might have
been the former; it may have been the latter. We admit the work did not
abide. But that was not the first time that Methodism failed in Boston.
Boardman came to Boston, and is said to have formed a class here in
1770, or near that time. But when Freeborn Garrettson visited Boston, in
1787, no trace of Boardman's class could be found. When William Black
came, a few years later, he found no trace of Freeborn Garrettson's
work; and though Mr. Black had a great revival, when Jesse Lee came, in
1798, no fruit of Mr. Black's labors were found. It still remains true,
on the authority of Dr. Cutler, who wrote from personal observation,
that there was a Methodist chapel in Boston in 1750; and, if so, it was
the first ever erected in America.
CHAPTER XVI.
WESLEY AND AMERICAN METHODISM.
SO far as we are able positively to determine Methodism in America
originated with immigrants from Ireland. To Barbara Heck must be given
the honor of delivering the first Methodist exhortation, which aroused
Philip Embury to return from his backslidings to God and give himself to
the work of the ministry of Methodism. Blessed be the name of Barbara
Heck! An angel would rejoice to share her honors! Who can estimate the
value of that earnest personal appeal to that card-playing company?
Soon a cry reached the ear of England's "flying evangelist" that a fire
had been kindled in America, where thirty years before he had sought in
vain to plant a Gospel the power of which he did not feel. Thomas Ball,
of Charleston, speaks of the sheep in the wilderness needing a shepherd.
"They have strayed," he says, "from England into the wild woods here,
and they are running wild after the world. They are drinking their wine
in bowls, and are jumping and dancing, and serving the devil in groves
and under the green trees. And are not these lost sheep? And will none
of the preachers come here? Where is Bromfield? Where is John Pawson?
Where is Nicholas Manners? Are they living, and will they not come?"
This was the cry in and from the wilderness. A call for assistance came
also from Philip Embury.
Wesley's Conference met in 1769 in Leeds. Mr. Wesley put the question:
"We have a pressing call from our brethren in New York, who have built a
preaching house, to come over and help them. Who is willing to go?" When
was ever such a question asked, or call made, and Methodist preachers
not ready to respond, "Here I am, send me"? An answer came from Richard
Boardman and Joseph Pilmore, who were willing to face the perils of sea
and land to "save the wandering souls of men." The Conference took a
collection of twenty pounds to pay their passage, and fifty pounds
toward paying the debt on the "preaching house," as an expression of
their love for the American brethren. Before these godly men had reached
our shores Captain Webb, late from England, and barracks master at
Albany, had heard of the work in New York, and, being a local preacher
among the Wesleyans, joined Embury and his company and preached to the
people in his military regimentals, full of faith and power--preached
with a zeal which attracted hundreds to the Methodist faith.
On the arrival of Boardman and Pilmore--men of God--the work prospered.
Boardman preached in New York, extending his labors as far east as
Boston. Pilmore went to Philadelphia, but extended his labors south as
far as Charleston, S. C. The ministry of these holy men was greatly
blessed to the people, and new societies were formed as the work
extended.
Two years later Wesley made another call, and a response came from
Francis Asbury and Richard Wright. And never did Providence seem to
overrule in a more manifest manner than in the selection of Mr. Asbury.
But for him it does not seem that one vestige of Methodism would have
survived the War of the Revolution. He navigated the Methodist ship
through that fearful storm with consummate skill. It is true that he was
arrested and fined twenty-five dollars for preaching, but he held his
place. He was obliged to seek shelter in the hospitable home of Hon.
Thomas White, of Delaware, where he remained, partly concealed, for
nearly two years. The military authorities then discovered that he was a
friend and not a foe to American independence, and he was thereafter
allowed to exercise his ministry without annoyance. No peril could deter
him from his purpose. "In passing through the Indian country, west of
the mountains," he is said to have "often encamped in the wilderness,
where no one ventured to sleep except under the protection of a
trustworthy sentinel." He possessed the zeal, industry, and patience of
an apostle. He may truly be said to be the father of American Methodism.
He lived in the affections of a grateful people and walked in the
constant light of perfect love.
On his coming to America he found only 14 itinerant ministers, with a
few local preachers, and 371 members. At his death there were nearly 700
itinerants, 2,000 local preachers, and 214,000 members. When unable to
preach but little he filled his carriage with Bibles and Testaments, and
scattered them as he went, saying, "Whatever I have been doing
heretofore, now I know I am sowing good seed."
DR. THOMAS COKE.
This is a name that must ever stand high in the annals of American
Methodism. Born in Wales in 1747, a graduate of Oxford University, and
settled over South Petherton Parish, Somersetshire, he became acquainted
with the Methodists, and, imbibing their spirit, his ministry became
truly spiritual and faithful--so much so that it excited so much
opposition that he was dismissed from his curacy. He naturally sought
counsel of Wesley. Mr. Wesley says, August 18, 1776: "I went to Kingston
with Mr. Brown. Here I found a clergyman, Dr. Coke, late a gentleman
and commoner of Jesus College, Oxford, who came twenty miles on purpose
to see me. I had much conversation with him, and a union then began
which I trust shall never end." Dr. Coke was of great service to Mr.
Wesley in many ways, preaching in London and in other parts of England
and Ireland, and under Mr. Wesley's direction he held the Irish
Conference in 1782.
In 1784 Dr. Coke was ordained by Mr. Wesley as general superintendent
and sent to America, with Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vassey, to
establish a Methodist Church, and to ordain Francis Asbury to the same
office of superintendent that they might conjointly take charge of the
American work. They arrived in America in 1784, and, having conferred
with Mr. Asbury and other ministers, a general convention of ministers
was called, to meet on Christmas, for the purpose of organizing the
Church.
They assembled in Baltimore, and decided to organize an independent
Church to be called the "Methodist Episcopal Church." They elected Dr.
Coke and Francis Asbury bishops instead of general superintendents. And
so, on that Christmas Day, 1784, the Methodist Episcopal Church became a
fact for all coming time.
Dr. Coke has the honor of being the first Protestant bishop in America,
with the exception of some visitors who had been sent here by the
Moravians.
Dr. Coke very soon returned to England. He designed, at first, to make
America his home; but such were the urgent necessities of the work in
England, especially after the death of Wesley, that the General
Conference permitted him to remain there, but not to exercise his
episcopal functions outside of America. He resided for many years in
England. He established missions in the West India Islands. He presided
for many years in the Irish Conference, and frequently in England. He
made several visits to the United States, the last being in 1804. On
that occasion he went as far east as Boston, spending a full week in
Providence, R. I. An incident illustrating his humility and undying love
for the Church of his choice occurred on his visit to Providence. A
gentleman in New York had requested James Burrill, Esq., a lawyer and a
highly respectable citizen of Providence, to receive Dr. Coke with the
honors due an English bishop, though he was not an English bishop. Rev.
Thomas Lyell accompanied Dr. Coke from Newport to Providence. A crowd
had assembled on the wharf to see and welcome a bishop. Arrangements had
been made for Dr. Coke's entertainment at the palatial residence of John
Enos Clark, Esq., a wealthy citizen of Providence, and Mr. Clark's
carriage was in waiting. As Dr. Coke landed he inquired of Messrs. Clark
and Burrell if there were any Methodists in the town. They knew of none.
Mr. Shubal Cady, the class leader, being present, came forward and said,
"There is a small class." He then asked, "Where do the Methodist
preachers stop when they come to town?" He was informed that they
stopped with Mr. Benjamin Turpin, a Quaker gentleman. Dr. Coke then
expressed a desire to stop there, if convenient. Mr. Turpin, being
present, assured him that he would be pleased to entertain him, though
his accommodations were greatly inferior to those of Mr. Clark. Mr.
Clark's carriage conveyed the bishop to the residence of Mr. Turpin,
where he remained during his stay in Providence.
Dr. Coke was invited to preach in the churches. But before he consented
he inquired where the Methodist ministers preached when they came to
town. Being told that they preached in an old Town House, he refused all
other invitations until he had first preached where they did. He knew
that Methodism was weak and despised in Providence, and he was
determined that the Methodists should receive the benefit first of
whatever influence his position gave him. With him it was Methodism
first, then a world-wide fraternity with all the family of God.
The missionary spirit dominated Dr. Coke. "He was himself a missionary
society." In all his journeys he paid his own expenses. At the age of
nearly seventy he proposed to the Wesleyan Conference to go personally
to the East Indies and establish a mission. The Conference objected on
account of expense. He offered to bear the entire expense himself, to
the amount of thirty thousand dollars, and the Conference finally
consented. He selected six men to accompany him, and sailed for the
Indies. A few days before they expected to land Dr. Coke was found dead
one morning in his stateroom. The mission was established, though Dr.
Coke was with the glorified. He was buried in the Indian Ocean, where,
in after years, Dr. Judson, the great Baptist missionary, rested from
his labors.
It has been said, "No man in Methodism, except Wesley, did more for the
extension of the work through the world than Dr. Coke." Mr. Asbury says,
"He was a minister of Christ, in zeal, in labor, and in services, the
greatest man of the last century."
Bishop Asbury continued his labors with marvelous success until March,
1816, when, in great weakness, he preached his last sermon, Sunday,
March 24. Hoping to attend the General Conference, which met in
Baltimore, May 1, he succeeded in reaching Spottsylvania, and there, on
the afternoon of the following Sunday, he fell asleep in Jesus. Dr.
Coke died three years before Mr. Asbury. These were great, good, and
honored men.
Methodism spread from its first introduction. Robert Strawbridge,
accompanied by Robert Williams and John King, was the first to enter
Maryland. Captain Webb was the first to introduce Methodism into
Pennsylvania. Freeborn Garrettson, assisted by William Black, was the
first to enter New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Boardman, Jesse Lee, and
Freeborn Garrettson were the first to enter New England, including
Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Francis Clark, a
local preacher, was the first to enter Kentucky, in 1782. The first
Conference preachers were James Haw and Benjamin Ogden. We do not know
who first entered Indiana. Lorenzo Dow was the first to carry Methodism
into Alabama, in 1803 or 1804. Jesse Lee was the first to enter Florida,
then Spanish, in 1807; he crossed the St. Mary's River in a small boat,
knelt down in the woods, and implored God to claim the territory for
himself. In 1823 J. N. Gallen was appointed to St. Augustine. E. W.
Bowman was the first to enter Louisiana, in 1805, where the people were
said to know "nothing of God or religion." Joseph Pilmore was first to
enter South Carolina, in 1773; in 1785, Asbury, not to speak of Wesley,
in 1736. In 1769 Robert Williams, a local preacher, was first to enter
Virginia and preach his first sermon at Norfolk. Joseph Tillard was the
first Methodist preacher to enter Illinois; he formed the first class.
Nathan Bangs preached the first Methodist sermon in Detroit, Mich., and
William Mitchell organized the first class. Beverly Allen preached first
in Georgia, in 1785. In 1835 L. Stevens entered Iowa. In 1849 William
Roberts and J. H. Wilber, on their way to Oregon, spent some time in San
Francisco, and in 1849 Isaac Owen and William Taylor were sent as
missionaries to California. Wisconsin first heard the Gospel from John
Clark.
We have thus given the dates of the introduction of Methodism into the
several States, and the names of the preachers so far as we are able to
ascertain. There may be some mistakes in these dates and names, but they
are substantially correct.
But this work was not prosecuted without fearful persecution. Not all
suffered equally. Freeborn Garrettson, in a letter to Mr. Wesley, says:
"Once I was imprisoned, twice beaten, left on the highway speechless and
senseless (I must have gone to the world of spirits had not God sent a
good samaritan that took me to a friend's house); once shot at; guns and
pistols presented to my breast; once delivered from an armed mob, in the
dead of night, on the highway by a flash of lightning; surrounded
frequently by mobs; stoned frequently. I have had to escape for my life
at the dead of night. O, shall I ever forget the divine Hand which has
supported me?" Of his sufferings and labors in Nova Scotia he writes: "I
have traveled mountains and valleys frequently on foot, with my knapsack
on my back, guided by Indian paths in the wilderness when it was not
expedient to take a horse; and I had often to wade through morasses,
half a leg deep in mud and water, frequently satisfying my hunger with a
piece of bread and pork from my knapsack, quenching my thirst from a
brook, and resting my weary limbs on the leaves of the trees. Thanks be
to God! He compensated me for all my trials, for many precious souls
were awakened and converted to God." These holy men cared not how they
lived, what trials they endured, what hardships they suffered, so that
souls were won to Christ. These were but few of their sufferings.
One has said: "They braved the rigors of severe winters, and the perils
of flood and forest; they slumbered on hardest pillows and housed in
lowliest hovels. But in their work they were joyous; in their trials
they were patient; in their homes they were contented; in their
journeyings the woods echoed their songs; in their pulpits they had
power with man; in their persecutions they prayed for their enemies; in
their old age they testify they have not followed 'cunningly devised
fables;' in their death hour they are borne up on their shields, 'where
the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.' And in
their final home, 'These are they who came up out of great tribulation,
and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the
Lamb; thenceforth they are before the throne.'" We are now reaping the
fruit of their toil and enjoying the rich heritage they have bequeathed
to us.
CHAPTER XVII.
WESLEY APPROACHING THE CLOSE OF LIFE.
THOUGH persecution and opposition followed John Wesley from the day he
lifted up a standard of holiness within the classic walls of Oxford to
the hour that God's chariot bore him to the city of the Great King, he
never faltered in his purpose nor abated his zeal for an hour. As his
end drew near, the opposition which had been so relentless began to give
way. In many places it became greatly modified, and in others nearly
extinct. That a great change had come began to be manifest in public
opinion and feeling. Mob violence, which once swept everything, had
entirely subsided, and towns and cities which once welcomed him with
brickbats and rotten eggs now hailed him as the greatest of modern
evangelists. Many who bade him depart out of their coasts as a crazy
fanatic now thought it an honor to welcome him as a man of many virtues
and unparalleled labors. In 1789, visiting Falmouth, Mr. Wesley says:
"The last time I was here, above forty years ago, I was taken prisoner
by an immense mob, gaping and roaring like lions. But how is the tide
turned! High and low now lined the street, from one end of the town to
the other, out of stark love, gaping and staring as if the king were
going by."
Wesley outlived all his early colaborers. He saw them fall one by one,
until he stood alone of them all, waiting and watching, but pressing
toward the mark for the prize.
The first to fall was the zealous, deeply consecrated, and profoundly
intellectual Walsh, at the age of twenty-eight, one of the best biblical
scholars of his day. His last words were, "He's come! He's come!" and a
cloud received him from human sight. Of him Wesley said: "Such a master
of Bible knowledge I never saw before and never expect to see again. If
he was questioned concerning any Hebrew word in the Old, or any Greek
word in the New, Testament, he could tell, after a little pause, not
only how often the one or the other occurred in the Bible, but also what
it meant in every place."
Next to follow him was the earnest, fearless, honest Grimshaw,
exclaiming: "I am happy as I can be in this world, and as sure of heaven
as though I were there. I have my foot on the threshold already."
Next fell Whitefield, in America, one of the most eloquent and effective
preachers that ever lifted up his voice among men, by which Wesley was
greatly moved.
Then followed the amiable, venerable Perronet, of Shoreham, whom Charles
Wesley was wont to call "the Archbishop of Methodism."
Then fell the most saintly man of his time--a real translation--the
seraphic Fletcher, shouting, "God is love! O, for a gust of praise to go
to the ends of the earth!" Mr. Wesley says of him: "For many years I
despaired of finding an inhabitant of Great Britain that could stand in
any degree of comparison with Gregory Lopez or Mons. de Renty. But let
any impartial person judge if Mr. Fletcher was at all inferior to them.
Did he not experience deep communion with God, and as high a measure of
inward holiness as was experienced by either one or the other of those
burning and shining lights? And it is certain his outward light shone
before men with full as bright a luster as theirs. I was intimately
acquainted with him for thirty years. I conversed with him morning,
noon, and night, without the least reserve, during a journey of many
hundred miles, and in all that time I never heard him speak an improper
word or saw him do an improper action. To conclude, within fourscore
years I have known many excellent men, holy in heart and life, but one
equal to him I have not known; one so uniformly and deeply devoted to
God, so unblamable a man in every respect I have not found either in
Europe or America. Nor do I expect to find another such on this side
eternity."
[Illustration: THE ROOM IN WHICH WESLEY DIED.]
Next came the sad tidings of the death of his brother Charles, but
little, if at all, inferior to Whitefield as a preacher, and whose
sacred lyrics will live so long as human hearts are melted and charmed
by the power of song. Just before the silver cord was loosed he
requested his wife to write--it was his last:
"In age and feebleness extreme,
Who shall a sinful worm redeem?
Jesus, my only hope thou art,
Strength of my failing flesh and heart:
O could I catch one smile from thee,
And drop into eternity!"
At the very moment that Charles was bidding adieu to earth John was at
Shropshire, and the congregation was engaged in singing:
"Come, let us join our friends above
That have obtained the prize,
And on the eagle wings of love
To joys celestial rise.
Let all the saints terrestrial sing,
With those to glory gone;
For all the servants of our King,
In earth and heaven, are one.
"One family we dwell in him,
One church above, beneath,
Though now divided by the stream,
The narrow stream, of death.
One army of the living God,
To his command we bow;
Part of his host have crossed the flood,
And part are crossing now."
Thus friend after friend departed, but Wesley pressed forward with a
zeal which knew no abatement until eighty and seven years had passed
over him.
On his last birthday he writes: "This day I enter into my eighty-eighth
year. For above eighty-six years I found none of the infirmities of old
age; my eye did not wax dim, neither was my natural strength abated. But
last August I found almost a sudden change--my eyes were so dim that no
glasses would help me; my strength likewise quite forsook me and
probably will not return in this world. But I feel no pain from head to
foot, only it seems nature is exhausted, and, humanly speaking, will
sink more and more till
'The weary springs of life stand still at last.'"
He attended and presided at his last Conference, held at Bristol, July
20, 1790. Anxious to devote every hour and moment to the service of the
Master, he visits Cornwall, London, and the Isle of Wight, and then
returns to Bristol. He is again in London, and then he is seen standing
under the shade of a large tree at Winchelsea, preaching his last
outdoor sermon. Though unable to preach longer in the open air, he still
continues to preach "the glorious Gospel of the blessed God." At
Colchester rich and poor, clergy and laity, throng to hear him in
wondering crowds. At Norwich, where once mob violence swept everything,
he is received as an angel of mercy. At Yarmouth the house is thronged.
At Lynn all the clergymen in the town, save one who was lame, came out
to hear him.
Again he is in London preaching in all his chapels, and even making
preparations to visit Ireland and Scotland, but these last visits his
failing strength will not allow. Well does Tyerman call him "the flying
evangelist."
The shadows are lengthening, and he seems conscious that his end is
near. He preaches his last sermon at Leatherhead, Wednesday, February 3,
1791, from Isa. lv, 6: "Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye
upon him while he is near." He concluded the sermon by singing one of
Charles Wesley's hymns:
"O that without a lingering groan
I may the welcome word receive;
My body with my charge lay down,
And cease at once to work and live!"
On that day fell from his lips a Gospel trumpet which had sounded the
word of life more frequently and effectually than was ever known to have
been done by an uninspired man.
CHAPTER XVIII.
WESLEY AND HIS TRIUMPHANT DEATH.
WESLEY had reached his home--City Road--the proper place from which to
be translated to his heavenly mansion. He is waiting for the chariot.
His friends are deeply anxious. Joseph Bradford sends the following
dispatch to the preachers:
"Dear brethren, Mr. Wesley is very ill. Pray! Pray! Pray!"
Looking over the whole of an extended life of unparalleled labor and
suffering, he exclaims:
"I the chief of sinners am,
But Jesus died for me."
The day following he was heard to say, "There is no way into the holiest
but by the blood of Jesus."
He frequently, with full heart, sang Watts's rapturous hymn, beginning:
"I'll praise my Maker while I've breath."
The tide of life is rapidly ebbing, but light from the realms above
reveals to his enraptured soul the glories of his eternal home.
Collecting all his remaining strength, he joyfully exclaims, "The best
of all is, God is with us."
The chamber where the good man gathered up his feet in death seemed
radiant with the divine glory. A few of his preachers and intimate
friends were there--Bradford, long his traveling companion; Dr.
Whitehead, afterward his biographer; Rogers and his devoted wife, Hester
Ann, who ministered to him in his last hours; the daughter of Charles
Wesley; Thomas Rankin; George Whitefield, his book steward; and a few
others. They knelt around the couch of the dying saint. Bradford prayed.
Then with a low but almost angelic whisper he said, "Farewell." It was
his last. And at the moment Bradford was saying, in a petition which
must have reached the throne of God, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates,
and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and this heir of glory shall
come in." While they thus lingered "the weary wheels of life" stood
still, and the unparalleled career of John Wesley was ended at 10 A. M.,
March 2, 1791.
Hester Ann Rogers, who was present, says: "And while he could hardly be
said to be an inhabitant of earth, being now speechless, and his eyes
fixed, victory and glory were written on his countenance, and quivered,
as it were, on his dying lips. No language can paint what appeared in
that face! The more we gazed upon it the more we saw heaven
unspeakable."
Thus lived and died the founder of the Methodist denomination.
It was remembered that when the mother of Wesley was dying she said,
"Children, as soon as I am dead sing a song of praise." So, as Wesley
himself ceased to breathe, his friends, standing about his lifeless
form, sang:
"Waiting to receive thy spirit,
Lo! the Saviour stands above;
Shows the purchase of his merit,
Reaches out the crown of love."
He had requested in his will, and, in the name of God, most solemnly
adjured his executors scrupulously to observe it, that six poor men
should carry his body to the grave, and should receive one pound each
for the same. He requested that there should be no display, no hearse,
no coach, no escutcheon, no pomp, except the tears of those who loved
him and were following him to Abraham's bosom. All these directions were
strictly observed.
He was buried in the cemetery of the City Road Chapel.
Mr. Wesley's death attracted public notice beyond any former example not
only in London, but throughout the United Kingdom. Thousands of his
people, with the traveling preachers, went into mourning for him. The
pulpits of the Methodists and of many other denominations were draped in
black, and hundreds of sermons were preached on the subject of his
death.
His indefatigable zeal had long been witnessed by all classes; but his
motives had been variously estimated. Some attributed it to love of
popularity, others to ambition, and others to love of wealth; but it now
appeared that he was actuated by a pure regard for the immortal
interests of mankind. Many ministers, both of the Establishment and
among Dissenters, spoke with great respect of his long, laborious,
devoted, and useful life, and earnestly exhorted their hearers to follow
him as he followed Christ.
"He was a man," says Lord Macaulay, "whose eloquence and logical
acuteness might have rendered him eminent in literature; whose genius
for government was not inferior to that of Richelieu; and who devoted
all his powers, in defiance of obloquy and derision, to what he
sincerely considered the highest good of his species."
The ardor of his spirit was never dampened by difficulties nor subdued
by age. The world ascribed this to enthusiasm, but he ascribed it to the
grace of God. Whatever it was, it has commanded the respect of the
present generation. He who was expelled from all the churches as a
madman and a fanatic is now deemed worthy of a most eligible niche in
England's grandest cathedral.
Dr. Watts's admirable elegy on Thomas Gouge has been applied to the
death of Wesley:
"The muse that mourns a nation's fall
Should wait at Wesley's funeral;
Should mingle majesty and groans,
Such as she sings to sinking thrones;
And in deep-sounding numbers tell
How Zion trembled when this pillar fell;
Zion grows weak, and England poor,
Nature herself, with all her store,
Can furnish such a pomp for death no more."
On the monument in Westminster Abbey is the simple inscription:
JOHN WESLEY, M.A.
BORN JUNE 17, 1703; DIED MARCH 2, 1791.
CHARLES WESLEY, M.A.
BORN DECEMBER 17, 1707; DIED MARCH 29,
1788.
This is engraved upon the tablet:
"I look upon all the world as my parish."
"The best of all is, God is with us."
"God buries his workmen, but carries on his work."
The first two were the utterances of John, and the last of Charles,
Wesley.
The following poem was written by the "Bard of Sheffield," Hon. James
Montgomery, on the first centennial of Wesleyan Methodism, 1836. It is
a beautiful tribute:
A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.
One song of praise, one voice of prayer,
Around, above, below;
Ye winds and waves the burden bear,
A hundred years ago!
A hundred years ago! What then?
There rose the world to bless
A little band of faithful men--
A cloud of witnesses.
It looked but like a human hand;
Few welcomed it, more feared.
But as it opened o'er the land
The hand of God appeared.
The Lord made bare his holy arm
In sight of earth and hell;
Fiends fled before it with alarm,
And alien armies fell.
God gave the word, and great has been
The preachers' company.
What wonders have our fathers seen!
What signs their children see!
One song of praise for mercies past,
Through all our courts resound;
One voice of prayer, that to the last
Grace may much more abound.
All hail! a hundred years ago!
And when our lips are dumb,
Be millions heard rejoicing so,
A hundred years to come.
CHAPTER XIX.
WESLEY'S CHARACTER AS ESTIMATED BY UNBIASED JUDGES.
REV. DR. RIGG, author of _The Living Wesley_, says: "No single man for
centuries has moved the world as Wesley moved it; since Luther, no man."
Dr. Abel Stevens, the historian of Methodism, says Mr. Wesley
"possessed, in an eminent degree, one trait of a master mind--the power
of comprehending and managing at once the outlines and details of plans.
It is this power that forms the philosophical genius in science; it is
essential to the successful commander and great statesman. It is
illustrated in the whole economical system of Methodism."
Bishop Coke, in speaking of Mr. Wesley's unbounded benevolence, says:
"Sometimes, indeed, the love which believeth and hopeth all things, of
which he had so large a share, laid him open to imposition, and wisdom
slept at the door of love; if there was any fault in his public
character, it was an excess of mercy."
Mr. Lecky (no mean judge) has this to say: "The evangelical movement
which directly or indirectly originated with Wesley produced a general
revival of religious feeling which has incalculably increased the
efficiency of almost every religious body in the community, while at the
same time it has materially affected party politics."
In Green's _History of the English People_ he speaks of Wesley and
Whitefield thus: "In power as a preacher Wesley ranked next to
Whitefield; as a hymn writer he stood second to his brother Charles.
But, combining in some degree the excellences of either, he possessed
qualities in which both were utterly deficient--an indefatigable
industry, cool judgment, command over others, a faculty of organization,
and a union of patience and moderation, with an imperious ambition which
marked him as a ruler of men." "If men may be measured by the work they
have accomplished, John Wesley can hardly fail to be recorded as the
greatest figure that has appeared in the religious world since the days
of the Reformation."
When Dean Stanley, in 1876, unveiled the memorial tablet erected in
Westminster Abbey to the memory of John and Charles Wesley, consisting
of medallion profiles of these great men, he said: "John Wesley is
presented as preaching on his father's tomb, and I have always thought
that it is, as it were, a parable which represented his relation to
national institutions. He took his stand on his father's tomb--on the
venerable and ancestral traditions of the country and the Church. That
was the stand from which he addressed the world; it was not from points
of disagreement, but from the points of agreement, with those in the
Christian religion that he produced those great effects which have never
since died out in English Christendom. It is because of his having been
in that age, which I am inclined to think has been unduly disparaged,
the reviver of religious fervor among our churches that we all feel we
owe him a debt of gratitude, and that he ought to have this monument
placed among those of the benefactors of England. These men had a
perfect right to this national and lasting honor."
Mr. Augustin Birrell, queen's councilor and member of Parliament, in a
lecture before the Royal Institute of London, says of John Wesley: "The
life of John Wesley, who was born in 1703 and died in 1791, covered,
practically, the whole of the eighteenth century, of which he was one of
the most remarkable and strenuous figures, and his Journals were the
most amazing records of human exertion ever penned by man. Those who
have ever contested a parliamentary election know how exhausting was the
experience; yet John Wesley contested the three kingdoms in the cause of
Christ, and during the contest, which lasted forty-four years, he paid
more turnpike toll than any man who ever lived. His usual record of
travel was eight thousand miles a year [we think this an overestimate],
and even when he was an old man it seldom fell below five thousand
miles. Wesley was a great bit of the eighteenth century, and was,
therefore, a great revealing record of the century. He was a cool,
level-headed man, and had he devoted his talents to any other pursuit
than that of spreading religion he must have acquired a large fortune;
but from the first day of his life, almost, he learned to regard
religion as his business."
"A greater poet may rise than Homer or Milton," says Dr. Dobbins, "a
greater theologian than Calvin, a greater philosopher than Bacon, a
greater dramatist than any of ancient or modern fame; but a more
distinguished revivalist of the churches than John Wesley, never."
"Taking him altogether," says Mr. Tyerman, "Wesley is a man _sui
generis_. He stands alone; he has no successor; no one like him went
before; no contemporary was a coequal. There was a wholeness about the
man such as is rarely seen. His physique, his genius, his wit, his
penetration, his judgment, his memory, his beneficence, his religion,
his diligence, his conversation, his courteousness, his manners, and his
dress made him as perfect as we ever expect man to be on this side of
heaven." He arose with the lark, traveled with the sun, preached like
an angel through three kingdoms, claimed the world for his parish, and
died like a hero, shouting, "The best of all is, God is with us."
Wilberforce said, "I consider Wesley as the most influential mind of the
last century--the man who will have produced the greatest effects
centuries, or perhaps millenniums, hence, if the present race of men
should continue so long."
No more graphic description of the Wesleyan movement has appeared than
that given by F. W. Farrar, Dean of Canterbury. He says:
John Wesley found a Church forgetful and neglectful of
its duties, somnolent in the plethora of riches, and
either unmindful or unwisely mindful of the poor. He
found churches empty, dirty, neglected, crumbling into
hideous disrepair; he found the work of the ministry
performed in a manner scandalously perfunctory.... But
John Wesley, becoming magnetic with moral sincerity,
flashed into myriads of hearts fat as brawn, cold as
ice, hard as the nether millstone, the burning spark
of his own intense convictions, and thus he saved the
Church....
Although the world and the Church have learned to be
comparatively generous to Wesley, now that a hundred
years have sped away, and though the roar of
contemporary scandal has long since ceased, I doubt
whether even now he is at all adequately appreciated.
I doubt whether many are aware of the extent to which
to this day the impulse to every great work of
philanthropy and social reformation has been due to
his energy and insight. The British and the Foreign
Bible Society, the Religious Tract Society, the London
Missionary Society, even the Church Missionary
Society, owe not a little to his initiative. The vast
spread of religious instruction by weekly periodicals,
and the cheap press, with all its stupendous
consequences, were inaugurated by him. He gave a great
extension to Sunday schools and the work of Robert
Raikes. He gave a great impulse both to national
education and to technical education, and in starting
the work of Silas Told, the foundry teacher, he
anticipated the humble and holy work of John Pounds,
the Portsmouth cobbler. He started in his own person
the funeral reform, which is only now beginning to
attract public attention, when in his will he directed
that at his obsequies there should be no hearse, no
escutcheon, no coach, no pomp. He visited prisons and
ameliorated the lot of prisoners before John Howard;
and his very last letter was written to stimulate
William Wilberforce in his parliamentary labors for
the emancipation of the slave. When we add to this the
revival of fervent worship and devout hymnology among
Christian congregations, and their deliverance from
the drawling doggerel of Sternhold and Hopkins, and
the frigid nullities of Tate and Brady, we have indeed
shown how splendid was the list of his achievements,
and that, as Isaac Taylor says, he furnished "the
starting point for our modern religious history in all
that is characteristic of the present time."
And yet, in this long and splendid catalogue, we have
not mentioned his greatest and most distinctive work,
which was that through him to the poor the Gospel was
again preached. Let Whitefield have the credit of
having been the first to make the green grass his
pulpit and the heaven his sounding-board; but Wesley
instantly followed, at all costs, the then daring
example, and through all evil report and all furious
opposition he continued it until at last at Kingswood,
at the age of eighty-one, he preached in the open air,
under the shade of trees which he himself had planted,
and surrounded by the children and children's children
of his old disciples, who had long since passed away.
Overwhelming evidence exists to show what preaching
was before and in his day; overwhelming evidence
exists to show what the Church and people of England
were before and in his day--how dull, how vapid, how
soulless, how Christless was the preaching; how
torpid, how Laodicean was the Church; how godless, how
steeped in immorality was the land. To Wesley was
mainly granted the task, for which he was set apart by
the hands of invisible consecration--the task which
even an archangel might have envied him--of awakening
a mighty revival of the religious life in those dead
pulpits, in that slumbering Church, in that corrupt
society. His was the religious sincerity which not
only founded the Wesleyan community, but, working
through the heart of the very Church which had
despised him, flashed fire into her whitening embers.
Changing its outward forms, the work of John Wesley
caused, first, the evangelical movement, then the high
church movement, and, in its enthusiasm of humanity,
has even reappeared in all that is best in the humble
Salvationists, who learned from the example of Wesley
what Bishop Lightfoot called "that lost secret of
Christianity, the compulsion of human souls."
Recognizing no utterance of authority as equally
supreme with that which came to him from the Sinai of
conscience, Wesley did the thing and scorned the
consequence. His was the voice which offered hope to
the despairing and welcome to the outcast.... The poet
says:
"Of those three hundred grant but three
To make a new Thermopylæ."
And when I think of John Wesley, the organizer, of
Charles Wesley, the poet, of George Whitefield, the
orator, of this mighty movement, I feel inclined to
say of those three self-sacrificing and holy men,
Grant but even one to help in the mighty work which
yet remains to be accomplished! Had we but three such
now,
[Illustration: JOHN WESLEY'S GRAVE.]
"Hoary-headed selfishness would feel
His deathblow, and would totter to his grave;
A brighter light attend the human day,
When every transfer of earth's natural gift
Should be a commerce of good words and works."
We have, it is true, hundreds of faithful workers in
the Church of England and in other religious
communities. But for the slaying of dragons, the
rekindlement of irresistible enthusiasm, the redress
of intolerable wrongs, a Church needs many Pentecosts
and many resurrections. And these, in the providence
of God, are brought about, not by committees and
conferences and common workers, but by men who escape
the average; by men who come forth from the multitude;
by men who, not content to trudge on in the beaten
paths of commonplace and the cart-ruts of routine, go
forth, according to their Lord's command, into the
highways and hedges; by men in whom the love of God
burns like a consuming flame upon the altar of the
heart; by men who have become electric to make myriads
of other souls thrill with their own holy zeal. Such
men are necessarily rare, but God's richest boon to
any nation, to any society, to any Church, is the
presence and work of such a man--and such a man was
John Wesley.
CHAPTER XX.
THE GREATER WESLEY OF THE OPENING CENTURY.
WHEN on March 2, 1791, John Wesley closed his eyes to earth and opened
them in heaven the visible results of his life were already great. At
the opening of this new century they are greater. Only a few rods from
where he his "body with his charge laid down, and ceased at once to work
and live," is Wesley's Chapel, City Road, the head center of universal
Methodism. Standing on the walls of this Zion in 1791 and looking
around, what would we see?
Confining our vision within the bounds of Great Britain and Ireland, we
would see this chapel surrounded by 644 others, "wholly appropriate to
the worship of God." These chapels are ministered unto by 294 itinerant
preachers, and have an enrollment of 71,668 members of the societies.
Extending our vision to the regions beyond, in the Wesleyan Methodist
missions in France, the West Indies, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, we
would see in 1791 an enrolled membership of 5,300, looked after by 19
ministers; giving as the total of Wesleyan Methodists at that time
76,968, and 313 ministers.
In addition to the home and foreign work of which John Wesley was the
head, and City Road Chapel the center, was the Methodism of the United
States, which in 1790 reported 43,265 members and 198 ministers, and
which was known as "The Methodist Episcopal Church of America." So that
we would see as the total of Methodists in the world at Wesley's last
Conference, in 1790, 120,233 members, and 511 ministers. Besides these,
a great number who, from 1739 to 1790, saved by Methodist agency, had
been transferred to the Church above.
Let us now in this year 1901 stand again on the walls of this old
Methodist cathedral and look around us for the living monument of the
greater Wesley. With the March quarterly meetings' returns in our hands
we see that in great Britain alone "the total number of persons meeting
in class, seniors and juniors, is 573,140, an increase for the year of
12,937." To these must be added the 46,262 full members and 11,619 "on
trial" in the Wesleyan foreign missions reported in 1899. All these are
under the government of the mother Conference. Then there are the Irish,
French, South African, and West Indian Conferences, which are affiliated
to it; and to these must be added the detached bodies, such as the
Australian Methodist Church, the Methodist New Connection, Wesleyan
Reform Union, Primitive Methodists, Bible Christians, United Methodist
Free Churches, and Independent Methodist Churches, all included in "Old
World Methodism," and rolling up the grand totals of 25,675 churches,
1,201,663 members and probationers, and 64,550 traveling and local
preachers.
Thus the great Methodism of the Old World in 1791, with its 313
ministers and 76,968 members, in 1901 has become the greater Methodism,
with 64,550 preachers and 1,201,663 members.
Let the point of view now be changed from City Road Chapel, London, to
John Street Methodist Episcopal Church, in New York city, for a survey
of the New World Methodism. To the north is the Methodist Church of
Canada, with 11 Conferences and a mission in China, with a ministry,
traveling and local, of 4,322, and a membership of 284,901. The missions
in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, in 1791, have thus developed and become
the greater Canadian Methodism.
After this telescopic view let the vision be confined to American
Methodism. We are still at old John Street Church in New York city. The
Methodist tree, planted on this spot in 1766, has spread itself out into
16 branches, which with the parent trunk includes 9 white and 8 colored
growths. The 43,265 American Methodists of 1790 have grown into
5,916,349 in 1901, and the 198 ministers have increased to 37,907, who
preach in 54,351 Methodist churches. The Methodists lead the
ecclesiastical hosts in America in the matter of members, and stand
second only to the Roman Catholics, who count all adherents as
communicants. The latter claim 8,766,083 by including all born into
their families. Roman Catholicism in America has for its sharpest
competitor American Methodism. If the Methodists counted their adherents
as the Catholics do they would claim about 18,000,000 over against the
Catholics less than 9,000,000.
The names of the branches of the American Methodist family are: 1. The
Methodist Episcopal; 2. Union American Methodist Episcopal; 3. African
Methodist Episcopal; 4. African Union Methodist Protestant; 5. African
Methodist Episcopal Zion; 6. Methodist Protestant; 7. Wesleyan
Methodist; 8. Methodist Episcopal, South; 9. Congregational Methodist;
10. Congregational Methodist (colored); 11. New Congregational
Methodist; 12. Zion Union Apostolic; 13. Colored Methodist Episcopal;
14. Primitive Methodist; 15. Free Methodist; 16. Independent Methodist;
17. Evangelical Missionary. These all claim to be one in doctrine, one
in spirit and aim, and should be one in piety. Would that they were all
one in Church union!
Epworth Leaguers will be more especially interested in the progress of
their own Methodist Episcopal Church, which is the oldest daughter, as
well as the largest branch, of Wesleyan Methodism. From _The Methodist
Year Book_, 1901, we learn that our "lay membership--total of full
members and probationers (on partial returns only)--is 2,907,877." Dr.
H. K. Carroll in _The Christian Advocate_, January 3, 1901, tells the
story of progress so well that we insert the entire article:
Only living things grow. The abundant life of American
Methodism, beginning under favorable conditions, made
growth natural, luxuriant, and easy. The soil and the
sun, the air and the rains, were all that the fresh,
vigorous plant needed for a development which has been
truly amazing.
Time, 1766; place, New York; a godly woman calling a
few backslidden Methodists to their duty; a local
preacher; meetings in a sail loft; a new church
costing $3,000. Such was the beginning.
The soil was fallow. It produced rank weeds. There
were few husbandmen. Other churches insisted on
well-trained men from European schools. Methodism,
having no such resources, organized training classes
on the field and taught its men at the plow. Such were
the conditions.
Time, 1784; place, Baltimore; a plain meetinghouse
with stiff benches; 60 preachers in Conference; an
independent Church, with a name, an episcopacy, a
ministry, the sacraments, a practical system, a
doctrinal standard, a ritual. Such was the
organization. What has been the growth?
A growth of 2,900,000 in 134 years and of 2,835,000 in
the past century. The 65,000 has added to itself
nearly 44 times. The average annual gain has been
28,350.
The percentage of increase is 4,362. If the population
of the country had increased in this period at the
same rate, it would now be 232,000,000 instead of
76,300,000.
But the gains of the Methodist Episcopal Church have
been only a part of the gains of Methodism. Include
all branches since 1834, and we have:
The 65,000 has repeated itself about 91 times, or once
every 13 months during the last century. The
percentage of gain is 8,977. If the population had
increased at the same rate it would now be 476,000,000
instead of 76,300,000. The average annual gain has
been 58,350.
The gain in preachers in the Methodist Episcopal
Church is indicated as follows:
The gain for the century is 17,413. The 287 have been
multiplied by 62; average annual gain, 174.
The beginning in a sail loft in 1766, the erection
shortly afterward of a church costing $3,000, gave no
more promise of ecclesiastical wealth than it did of
growth in membership. Our 27,000 churches, worth
$116,000,000, show a development of resources as
wonderful as a miracle. It takes now between
$23,000,000 and $24,000,000 a year to carry on the
work of the Methodist Episcopal Church, to say nothing
about its universities, colleges, and hospitals. The
consecration of wealth is truly stupendous. Methodists
have not been stingy.
Methodism was ninth among Protestant denominations in
number of churches in 1775, and third in number of
communicants in 1800. It soon advanced to first place
in numbers, and easily holds this place at the end of
the century. It was only a handful of corn on the top
of the mountains at the beginning. How wonderfully has
God multiplied it!
It is pertinent to ask, How did it win its success?
Not by immigration, as many other Churches did. Roman
Catholics came here from Europe by hundreds of
thousands. The Lutheran, Reformed German, and
Presbyterian Churches gained immensely by the streams
of immigration. But Methodists and Baptists have
grown out of American soil and drawn their chief
strength from the surrounding elements.
Not by proselytism. We have lost hundreds of thousands
of converts; we have gained comparatively few in
return from the denominations we have fed. We would
like to hold all who are converted at our altars, but
we do not feel that our losses have impoverished us,
though they have enriched our neighbors.
Not because of wealth, social prestige, ecclesiastical
antiquity, or what an historian calls "the aristocracy
of education and position." Other Churches had these;
we began with nothing but a needy field and earnest
men, full of the Holy Ghost and flaming with zeal for
the Gospel.
Not by our machinery and methods. These were powerful,
even providential, aids; but if we ever come to depend
on these alone Methodism will be a great system of
enginery, with wheels, pulleys, cogs, and joints, all
silent and inert, because the boilers are cold. It was
not our itinerancy, our class meetings, our
Conferences, or our methods which gave us success.
Our hosts have been won, by the power of the Gospel
manifested in a real, religious experience, from the
vast classes of unconverted persons. We have regarded
these, wherever we found them, as legitimate prey. We
count it a special honor that our millions are
trophies won for Christ from the masses of godless,
indifferent, unconverted persons. The late Dr. John
Hall once said that he specially honored the Methodist
Church for the importance it attaches to conversion.
The power of Methodism is spiritual in its nature.
I do not believe a greater boon could be asked for our
Church in the twentieth century than that it might
continue to regard it as its special task to call men
and women to repentance and insist upon an experience
such as our fathers enjoyed and we profess.
When John Wesley lay dying in 1791 there were only four Methodist
schools in England--three small ones at London, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and
Bristol, and the Kingswood School, near Bristol. The latter is still
doing most excellent work at Bath. English Methodism has no university
or college empowered to grant degrees. It sadly lacks secondary schools.
The Leys School at Cambridge is its nearest approach to a reputable
American college. But it has a good share in the elementary education of
the people. Colonial Methodism excels in respect to secondary and higher
education. Of American Methodism in general, and of the Methodist
Episcopal Church in particular, it may be said, in this respect, "Many
daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all." Whilst
some of our colleges are somewhat prophetic, yet the long list of our
institutions and the honorable records they have made place us in the
front rank of American educators. It has been well said that "The
Methodist Episcopal Church began the century with the ashes of one
college." In 1900 it had 56 colleges and universities, 60 academies and
seminaries, 8 institutions exclusively for women, 4 missionary
institutions and training schools, 25 schools of theology, and 99
foreign mission schools--228 in all. These schools have more than 3,000
instructors, and about 50,000 students. The total value of property and
endowment is about $30,000,000. "The Board of Education" in 1873 began
its noble work of placing the first steps to these institutions very
near to the feet of any young man or woman who has the ability to climb
them, whether a Methodist or not. President Warren, of Boston
University, puts our educational work in the strongest possible light,
and in the briefest space, thus: "The Banner Church in Education."
That the Methodist Episcopal Church is indeed "the banner Church in
education" the following facts bear witness:
From 1784, the year of its organization, to 1884, the Methodist
Episcopal Church established 225 classical seminaries and colleges; in
other words, established a classical seminary or college every fifth
month through a hundred toilsome years. No other organization in human
history ever made so honorable a record in the higher education, or was
entitled to celebrate so jubilant a centennial. If we go back through
the stormy period of the Revolution to the first feeble beginnings of
American Methodism in 1766, we must add to the above-mentioned 225
institutions belonging to the Church the 58 known schools of more
private ownership, to get the true aggregate of Methodist institutions
for the higher education, namely, 283, a little more than one for every
fifth month through the first 118 years of our existence as a Church,
infancy included.
Is it not time to bury the ancient allegation that the early Methodists
were indifferent or hostile to learning? If the long-standing slander
must live on to the end of time, let us once in a hundred years lift it
gently into the pillory of ecumenical publicity and placard it as an
instructive example of immortal mendacity.
CONCLUSION.
What shall we now say of universal Methodism?
Of the millions reached by her ministry we have heard. The sun never
sets on her domain, for it is "from the rivers to the ends of the
earth." Her people are found in every land and are at home in every
zone. "All climates embrace them--the winters of Hudson's Bay, and the
sun-scorched plains of India. The Pacific waves break upon their shores,
and peaks crowned with eternal snow shadow their dwellings." As she
enters upon the twentieth century there should be no "wrinkle upon her
brow, no haze in her vision, no stoop to her form, no halt to her step,
giving signs of wasted energy or declining vigor;" and this will be her
history if the anointing of her founder abides upon her. Her sanctuaries
will be Bethesdas, and her prayer meetings Bethels. "She will gather in
the street Arab, and send missionaries to Orient fields of toil and
death." Her doctrines will be as when Wesley died; her philanthropy as
broad, her relations to other churches as catholic, as when he said,
"The world is my parish."
Methodism is to be the friend of all and the enemy of none. So long as
she maintains her power the world needs her, and she will not perish. So
long as she believes in conversion, and effectually preaches it, she
will not perish. So long as she believes in holiness of heart, and
proclaims it "clearly, strongly, and explicitly," she will not perish.
So long as she believes in the Holy Ghost and the baptism of fire, and
possesses it in its fullness, she will not perish, but will go forth all
aglow with the "dew of her youth bright as the sun, fair as the moon,
and terrible as an army with banners." She has the true doctrine and a
flexible economy; now let her cultivate the spirit and maintain the
tireless energy of her founders, and doctrines and Church shall be the
doctrines and Church of the future, even till Christ comes.
"When he first the work begun,
Small and feeble was his day:
Now the word doth swiftly run;
Now it wins its widening way:
More and more it spreads and grows,
Ever mighty to prevail;
Sin's strongholds it now o'erthrows,
Shakes the trembling gates of hell."
FOOTNOTES:
[A] _Some Heretics of Yesterday_, pp. 294, 295.
[B] _Wesley Family_, vol. i, p. 65.
[C] _Life of Wesley_, pp. 24, 25.
[D] _The Christian Advocate._
[E] _Works_, vol. ii, p. 24.
[F] _Works_, vol. vi, p. 718.
[G] _Ibid._, p. 525.
[H] _Sermons_, vol. ii, p. 50.
[I] Wesley's _Notes_ on 1 Cor. 15.
[J] _Works_, vol. i, p. 454.
[K] _Notes_ on Matt. 25. 41.
[L] _Some Heretics of Yesterday_, p. 300.
[M] Wesley's _Works_, vol. 1, p. 344.
[N] _Works_, vol. vi, p. 746.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Page 63, "Oglethrope" changed to "Oglethorpe" (reprove General
Oglethorp)
Page 66, "rickerty" changed to "rickety" (rickety old vessel)
Page 77, "pheaching" changed to "preaching" (foolishness of preaching)
Page 78, "aione" changed "alone" (Christ--Christ alone)
Page 136, "that" changed to "than" (sermon than he could)
Page 155, "evanglist" changed to "evangelist" (flaming Methodist
evangelist)
Page 182-183, James Burrill or Burrell both found in text, once each. A
search by the transcriber could not find which spelling was accurate so
this was retained.
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