1703, June 17, John Wesley born. 1707 (end of), Charles Wesley born. 1709, Fire at Epworth rectory. 1714, John Wesley goes to the Charterhouse. George Whitefield born. 1716–17, December 2—end of January, Epworth ghost. 1720, John Wesley goes up to Christchurch, Oxford. 1725, September 19, Ordained deacon. 1726, March 17, Elected Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. Charles Wesley goes up to Chirstchurch, Oxford, from Westminster School. 1727–29, August, 1727, November, 1729, Curate to his father at Wroote, Epworth. 1728, September 22, Ordained priest. 1729, John Wesley becomes “Father of the Holy Club.” 1732, Whitefield servitor at Pembroke College. 1733 (circa), John Wesley makes William Law’s acquaintance. 1735, April 25, the Rev. Samuel Wesley, John’s father, died. Charles Wesley ordained. October 14, John and Charles Wesley sail from Gravesend for Georgia. 1736, Charles Wesley returns. 1738, February 1, John returns to England, landing at Deal. George Whitefield leaves for Georgia. Wesley’s conversion and visit to the Moravians at Herrnhut. Whitefield returns from Georgia. 1739, February 17, Whitefield begins field preaching. Wesley begins field preaching. Whitefield returns to Georgia. May 12, Stone of first Methodist meeting-house laid. 1740, Wesley’s breach with the Moravians. 1740–48, Wesley separates from Whitefield on predestination. Breach with Calvinists. 1740–90, Period of Wesley’s itinerant preaching. 1741–45, Opposition and violence of mobs and magistrates to itinerant preaching. 1742, July, Susannah Wesley, John’s mother, dies. 1744, June 25, First Methodist Conference. 1748, Whitefield returns from Georgia. 1751, John Wesley marries Mrs. Vazeille. 1768, Regular Methodist society formed in New York, U.S. 1770, Whitefield dies at Newburyport, Mass. 1777, April 1, Foundation stone of City Road Chapel laid. 1784, Legal settlement of Conference effected. September 2, Wesley ordains Dr. Coke a bishop, and so founds Methodist Episcopal Church. 1788, March 29, Charles Wesley died. 1791, March 2, John Wesley died.

Personal

  Dear Son,—I came hither to-day because I cannot be at rest till I make you easier. I could not possibly manufacture any money for you here sooner than next Saturday. On Monday I design to wait on Dr. Morley, and will try to prevail with your brother to return you £8, with interest. I will assist you in the charges for ordination, though I am just now struggling for life. This £8 you may depend on the next week, or the week after. Your affectionate father.

  In the evening I went to a house in Aldersgate Street (London), where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt 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. I began to pray with all my might for those who had, in a more especial manner, despitefully used me, and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all there, what I now first felt in my heart.

  The regard I have always had for you and your brother, is still as great as ever; and I trust we shall give this and future ages an example of true Christian love abiding, notwithstanding difference in judgment. Why our lord has permitted us to differ as to some points of doctrine, will be discovered at the last day. I have had the pleasure of reading the continuance of your Appeal; and pray, that God would prosper every labour of your pen and lip.

	Here lieth the Body
	of
	JOHN WESLEY,
	A Brand plucked out of the burning;
	Who died of a Consumption in the
	Fifty-first Year
	of his Age,
	not leaving, after his Debts are paid,
	Ten Pounds behind him:
	Praying,
	God be merciful to me, an unprofitable
	Servant!

He ordered, that this, if any, inscription should be placed on his tombstone.

  I was once a kind of oracle with Mr. Wesley. I never suspected anything bad of him, or ever discovered any kind or degree of falseness or hypocrisy in him. But during all the time of his intimacy with me, I judged him to be much under the power of his own spirit, which seemed to have the predominance in every good thing or way that his zeal carried him to. It was owing to his unwillingness or inability to give up his own spirit that he was forced into that false and rash censure which he published in print against the mystics:—as enemies to good works, and even tending to atheism. A censure so false, and regardless of right and wrong, as hardly anything can exceed it; which is to be found in a preface of his to a book of hymns.

  A lean, elderly man, fresh colored, his hair smoothly combed, but with a soupçon of curls at the ends. Wondrous clean, but as evidently an actor as Garrick.

  By only erasing about half-a-dozen lines from the whole, I might defy the shrewdest of his readers to discover whether the lying apostle of the Foundery be a Jew, a papist, a pagan, or a Turk…. As unprincipled as a rook, and as silly as a jackdaw, first pilfering his neighbour’s plumage, and then going proudly forth, displaying his borrowed tail to the eyes of a laughing world…. Persons that are toad eaters to Mr. John Wesley stand in need of very wide throats, and that which he wishes them to swallow is enough to choke an elephant…. Wesley is a crafty slanderer, an unfeeling reviler, a liar of the most gigantic magnitude, a Solomon in a cassock, a wretch, a disappointed Orlando Furioso, a miscreant apostate, whose perfection consists in his perfect hatred of all goodness and good men.

  He said, “John Wesley’s conversation is good, but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man who loved to fold his legs and have out his talk, as I do.”

  Very lately I had an opportunity, for some days together, of observing Mr. Wesley with attention. I endeavoured to consider him, not so much with the eye of a friend, as with the impartiality of a philosopher; and 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 gay remembrance of a life well spent.

Wherever he went he diffused a portion of his own felicity. Easy and affable in his demeanour, 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 his conversation, we might be at a loss whether to admire most his fine classical taste, his extensive knowledge of men and things, or his overflowing goodness of heart. While the grave and serious were charmed with his wisdom, his sportive sallies of innocent mirth delighted even the young and thoughtless; and both saw in his uninterrupted cheerfulness the excellency of true religion. No cynical remarks on the levity of youth embittered his discourses. No applausive retrospect to past times marked his present discontent. In him even old age appeared delightful, like an evening without a cloud; and it was impossible to observe him without wishing fervently, “May my latter end be like his!”

	Sacred to the Memory
	OF THE REV. JOHN WESLEY, M.A.
	SOMETIME FELLOW OF LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD;
	A Man in Learning and sincere Piety
	Scarcely inferior to any;
	In Zeal, Ministerial Labours, and extensive Usefulness,
	Superior, perhaps, to all Men,
	Since the days of ST. PAUL.
	Regardless of Fatigue, personal Danger, and Disgrace,
	He went out into the highways and hedges
	Calling Sinners to Repentance,
	And Publishing the GOSPEL of Peace.
	He was the Founder of the Methodist Societies,
	And the chief Promoter and Patron
	Of the Plan of Itinerant preaching,
	Which he extended through GREAT BRITAIN and IRELAND,
	The WEST INDIES, and AMERICA,
	With unexampled Success.
	He was born the 17th of June, 1703;
	And died the 2d of March, 1791,
	In sure and certain hope of Eternal Life,
	Through the Atonement and Mediation of a Crucified Saviour.
	He was sixty-five Years in the Ministry,
	And fifty-two an Itinerant Preacher:
	He lived to see, in these Kingdoms only,
	About three hundred Itinerant,
	And one thousand Local Preachers,
	Raised up from the midst of his own People;
	And eighty thousand Persons in the Societies under his care.
	His Name will be ever had in grateful Remembrance
	By all who rejoice in the universal Spread
	Of the Gospel of CHRIST.
	Soli Deo Gloria.

  His face for an old man was one of the finest I have seen. A clear, smooth forehead, an aquiline nose, an eye the brightest and most piercing that can be conceived, and a freshness of complexion scarcely ever to be found at his years and impressive of the most perfect health, conspire to render him a venerable and interesting figure…. A narrow plaited stock, a coat with a small upright collar, no buckles at his knees, no silk or velvet in any part of his apparel, and a head as white as snow, gave an idea of something primitive and apostolical; while an air of neatness and cleanliness was diffused over his whole person…. In social life Mr. Wesley was lively and conversible, and of exquisite companionable talents. He had been much accustomed to society, was well acquainted with the rules of good breeding; and in general perfectly attentive and polite. The abstraction of a scholar did not appear in his behaviour. He spoke a good deal in company; and as he had seen much of the world, and in the course of his travels through every corner of the nation had acquired an infinite fund of anecdote and observation, he was not sparing in his communications, and the manner in which he related them was no inconsiderable addition to the entertainment they afforded. His manner in private life was the reverse of cynical or forbidding. It was sprightly and pleasant to the last degree, and presented a beautiful contrast to the austere deportment of many of his preachers and people, who seemed to have ranked laughter among the mortal sins. It was impossible to be long in his company without partaking his hilarity. Neither infirmities of age nor the approach of death had any apparent influence on his manners. His cheerfulness continued to the last, and was as conspicuous at fourscore as at one-and-twenty.

  His indefatigable zeal in the discharge of his duty has been long witnessed by the world; but, as mankind are not always inclined to put a generous construction on the exertions of singular talents, his motives were imputed to the love of popularity, ambition, and lucre. It now appears that he was actuated by a disinterested regard to the immortal interests of mankind. He laboured, and studied, and preached, and wrote, to propagate what he believed to be the gospel of Christ. The intervals of these engagements were employed in governing and regulating the concerns of his numerous societies; assisting the necessities, solving the difficulties, and soothing the afflictions of his hearers. He observed so rigid a temperance, and allowed himself so little repose, that he seemed to be above the infirmities of nature, and to act independent of the earthly tenement he occupied. The recital of the occurrences of every day of his life would be the greatest encomium. Had he loved wealth, he might have accumulated it without bounds. Had he been fond of power, his influence would have been worth courting by any party. I do not say he was without ambition; he had that which Christianity need not blush at, and which virtue is proud to confess. I do not mean that which is gratified by splendour and large possessions; but that which commands the hearts and affections, the homage and gratitude of thousands. For him they felt sentiments of veneration, only inferior to those which they paid to Heaven: to him they looked as their father, their benefactor, their guide to glory, and immortality: for him they fell prostrate before God, with prayers and tears, to spare his doom, and prolong his stay. Such a recompense as this is sufficient to repay the toils of the longest life. Short of this, greatness is contemptible impotence. Before this, lofty prelates bow, and princes hide their distinguished heads.

  Mr. Wesley had most exquisite talents to make himself agreeable in company, and having been much accustomed to society the rules of good breeding were habitual to him…. He never travelled alone; and the person who attended him had the charge of his letters and papers, which, of course, lay open to his inspection. The preachers, likewise, who were occasionally with him, had access to his letters and papers, especially if he so had confidence in their sincerity and zeal in religion, which it was not very difficult to obtain. It was easy for these persons to see the motive that influenced him, and the end he had in view in every action of his life, however remote from public observation; and he took no pains to conceal them, but seemed rather to court the discovery.

	Oh I have seen (nor hope perhaps in vain,
	Ere life go down, to see such sights again)
	A veteran warrior in the Christian field,
	Who never saw the sword he could not wield;
	Grave without dulness, learnèd without pride,
	Exact, yet not precise, though meek, keen-eyed;
	A man that would have foil’d at their own play
	A dozen would-be’s of the modern day;
	Who, when occasion justified its use,
	Had wit as bright as ready to produce,
	Could fetch from records of an earlier age,
	Or from philosophy’s enlighten’d 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 seem’d there at home,
	Ambitious not to shine or to excel,
	But to treat justly what he loved so well.

  During his last illness he said: “Let me be buried in nothing but what is woollen; and let my corpse be carried in my coffin into the chapel.”… In his will he directed that six poor men should have 20 shillings each for carrying his body to the grave; “for I particularly desire,” said he, “that there may be no hearse, no coach, no escutcheon, no pomp, except the tears of them that love me, and are following me to Abraham’s bosom.”… Wesley’s body lay in the chapel in a kind of state becoming the person, dressed in his clerical habit, with gown, cassock, and band, the old clerical cap on his head, a Bible in one hand, and a white handkerchief in the other…. The crowds who flocked to see him were so great that it was thought prudent, for fear of accident, to accelerate the funeral, and perform it between five and six in the morning. The intelligence, however, could not be kept entirely secret, and several hundred persons attended at that unusual hour.

  In dress, he was a pattern of neatness and simplicity. A narrow plaited stock, a coat with a small upright collar, no buckles at his knees, no silk or velvet in any part of his apparel, and his thin silver locks gave to his whole person an air of something primitive and apostolic. The same neatness and simplicity was manifest in every circumstance of his life. In his chamber and study, during his winter months of residence in London I never observed that a book was misplaced, or even a scrap of paper left unheeded. He could enjoy every convenience of life; and yet, he acted in the smallest things like a man who was not to continue an hour in one place. He seemed at home in every place, settled, satisfied, and happy: and yet was ready every hour to take a journey of a thousand miles. His conversation was always pleasing, and frequently interesting and instructive in the highest degree. By reading, traveling, and continual observation, he had acquired a fund of knowledge, which he dispensed with a propriety and perspicuity that has been rarely equalled. The Greek and Latin classics were as familiar to him as the most common English authors; and also many of the best French writers. Yet though so richly furnished, we believe those of the most improved taste have never observed in him the affectation of learning. He joined in every kind of discourse that was innocent.

  He is spoken of as credulous, as hoping good of men naturally, and able to hope it again from those that had deceived him. This last is weakness unless allied with wise decision and force, generosity when it is thus tempered. To the character of John Wesley it imparted a persuasive nobleness, and hallowed his earnestness with mercy. He had in a striking degree another of those balances between opposite forces which mark the great man. He kept himself open to new inspirations, was bold in apprehending and quick in carrying them out. Yet with a resolve once taken he showed a steadiness of purpose beyond what the timid scholars of tradition can conceive.

  As I was walking home one day from my father’s bank, I observed a great crowd of people streaming into a chapel in the City Road. I followed them; and saw laid out upon a table the dead body of a clergyman in full canonicals. It was the corpse of John Wesley; and the crowd moved slowly and silently round and round the table to take a last look at that most venerable man.

  Taking him altogether, Wesley is a man sui generis. He stands alone; he has had 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 heaven.

  It was indeed evident to the most cursory reader that the “enthusiasm” charged against him was that inner wellspring of power without which he could never have accomplished his great work; and that the “love of authority” is that quality which is actually necessary to a great leader of men. That Wesley was too apt to credit all that people told him may be true; himself sincere by nature, he gave too much credit for sincerity to all others. His nature, although calm and tranquil, was of the believing rather than of the doubting order; and this cannot be better illustrated than by the fact that while discussing some modern miracles, stated to have been wrought at the tomb of a French Abbé, he remarked that to doubt would be to unsettle all foundations based on human testimony. So slight defects as these could detract little from the intellectual and the moral stature of one of the very ablest and best men of modern times.

  Wesley, when a young man, was distinguished for his long flowing hair, which he wore to save the expense of a periwig, that he might give the money to the poor.

  Wesley was a scholar, an Oxford student, and he believed in the devil; he attributes to him sickness, nightmare, storms, earthquakes. His family heard supernatural noises; his father had been thrice pushed by a ghost; he himself saw the hand of God in the commonest events of life. One day at Birmingham, overtaken by a hailstorm, he felt that he received this warning, because at table he had not sufficiently exhorted the people who dined with him; when he had to determine on anything, he looked out by chance for a text of Scripture, in order to decide…. He lived the life of an apostle, giving away all that he earned, travelling and preaching all the year, and every year, till the age of eighty-eight; it has been reckoned that he gave away thirty thousand pounds, travelled about a hundred thousand miles, and preached forty thousand sermons.

  In power as a preacher he stood next to Whitefield; as a hymn-writer he stood second to his brother Charles. But while combining in some degree the excellences of either, he possessed qualities in which both were utterly deficient; an indefatigable industry, a cool judgment, a command over others, a faculty of organization, a singular union of patience and moderation with an imperious ambition, which marked him as a ruler of men. He had, besides, a learning and skill in writing which no other of the Methodists possessed; he was older than any of his colleagues at the start of the movement, and he outlived them all. His life, indeed, from 1703 to 1791, almost covers the century, and the Methodist body had passed through every phase of its history before he sank into the grave at the age of eighty-eight. It would have been impossible for Wesley to have wielded the power he did, had he not shared the follies and extravagance as well as the enthusiasm of his disciples. Throughout his life his asceticism was that of a monk. At times he lived on bread only, and often slept on the bare boards. He lived in a world of wonders and divine interpositions. It was a miracle if the rain stopped and allowed him to set forward on a journey. It was a judgment of Heaven if a hailstorm burst over a town which had been deaf to his preaching. One day, he tells us, when he was tired and his horse fell lame, “I thought—can not God heal either man or beast by any means or without any? Immediately my headache ceased and my horse’s lameness in the same instant.” With a still more childish fanaticism he guided his conduct, whether in ordinary events or in the great crises of his life, by drawing lots or watching the particular texts at which his Bible opened. But with all this extravagance and superstition, Wesley’s mind was essentially practical, orderly, and conservative. No man ever stood at the head of a great revolution whose temper was so anti-revolutionary.

  He belonged to an unbroken ancestral succession of English gentlemen, of whom at least his three immediate predecessors were scholars and divines…. No fibre of hereditary connection between himself and the artisan classes, or the peasantry of England, can be traced in all his long pedigree; and yet this was the man whose words were to take hold of colliers and weavers, of tinners and stone-masons, and hard-handed workers generally, as no man’s words had done before for centuries, if ever, or have done since.

  He was a man who had made religion the single aim and object of his life, who was prepared to encounter for it every form of danger, discomfort, and obloquy; who devoted exclusively to it an energy of will and power of intellect that in worldly professions might have raised him to the highest positions of honour and wealth. Of his sincerity, of his self-renunciation, of his deep and fervent piety, of his almost boundless activity, there can be no question. Yet with all these qualities he was not an amiable man. He was hard, punctilious, domineering, and in a certain sense even selfish.

  There must be many a field in Great Britain thick-sown with stones which have been thrown at John Wesley and his proto-Methodists. Traveling from four to five thousand miles every year, and preaching from two to four times nearly every day to audiences of thousands; often disturbed by mobs of men more savage than wild beasts; keeping an eye on all his preachers, and receiving their reports; starting a publishing house, and carrying it on, that his people everywhere might have wholesome intellectual fare within their scanty means; taking no money but just what would suffice for his bare expenses; stopping for no storms or floods, fires or frosts; reading and studying on horseback, and answering innumerable assaults through the press, from bishops, archbishops, and ecclesiastical foes of all ranks; compiling grammars in Greek, and Hebrew, and French, and Latin, for his students; editing, writing, translating, or abridging not less than two hundred different publications; eager only, in it all, to save men and to extend the kingdom of God. Half a million souls were to be numbered as his adherents at the close of that fifty years; and outside of this, a vast multitude that no man can number, morally and spiritually benefited by his movement. He is, I think, the finest illustration of consecrated, unselfish, whole-hearted devotion, for fifty solid years of this world’s dark history, that the Church of Christ has ever offered to the vision of men, perhaps to that of the angels.

  The illustrious personage now known in history under the modest title of the Rev. John Wesley, without any of the more ambitious affixes or prefaces of the present day, would have been reverenced as a great man in any age or country…. Wesley was always a very conscientious man. He was ambitious, also, but not for place. His ambition was for work, for enterprise, for doing something useful,—something which could not, or would not, be done by any other person. The very fact that nobody else would undertake a good thing was to him its best recommendation. The more strange, unusual, difficult, the scheme for doing good, the more his adventurous spirit was likely to be devoted to it. To such a mind, the regular, common-place, monotonous glory of living at his ease, as the acknowledged primate of the British world, would have presented no attractions. He preferred some impossible job, some Herculean labour, something to do where the most resolute would scarcely dare to go; and it is equally certain that his keen, sensitive, commanding consciousness, his imperial characteristic, pushed him in the same direction.

  A life which was all but commensurate with the eighteenth century, and which was certainly the busiest, and in some respects the most important life in that century—a life about which the most divers views have been taken, and in which the interest, so far from having slackened through lapse of time, is as keen if not keener than ever it was.

  Between the founder of the Society of Jesus and the creator of Wesleyan Methodism there is a parallel much closer than many good Methodists care to admit. Loyola was a Spaniard and a soldier. Wesley an Englishman and a parson, but after allowing for that initial difference there is much resemblance between the man who saved the Papacy in the sixteenth century and the man who saved Protestantism in the eighteenth. Loyola is, no doubt, a much more picturesque and a more heroic figure. The brilliant cavalier whose leg was smashed by a cannon ball at the siege of Pampeluna, set about the task of rallying the forces of Catholic Christendom in a manner more worthy of a countryman of the Cid and of Cervantes than did the trim little man who was reared in Epworth parsonage. But both had the same central idea at heart, both were inflamed with a passion for souls, and both sought to save souls by organizing a Religious Order. The English Church in those days, being a distinctly non-spiritual and Erastian institution, drove out the man whose labors might have reared an invulnerable rampart for Anglicanism throughout the world. The Roman church being wiser in its day and generation, has garrisoned its outposts with the followers of Loyola. The story is old and trite, but those who care to pursue the subject will find the parallel between Loyola and Wesley and Gen. Booth much closer than fervent Protestants generally recognize.

  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 bust placed in Westminster Abbey to the memory of John Wesley, more than twenty years ago, was a very tardy recognition of the vast debt of gratitude which England owes to him. It stands hard by the cenotaph of that other illustrious Nonconformist, Isaac Watts, and gives the beautiful presentment of the aged face of the evangelist and the fine features of Charles, his poet-brother. In the solemn aisle thousands of visitors to our great Temple of Silence and Reconciliation may read three of his great sayings—one, so full of holy energy, “I look on all the world as my parish;” another, so full of bright and holy confidence, “God buries his workmen, but continues his work;” the third, when, on his death-bed, uplifting victoriously his feeble and emaciated arm, he said: “The best of all is, God is with us.” “Yes!” he exclaimed again, in a tone of victorious rapture,” the best of all is, God is with us.”

  In 1899, when the map of England looks like a gridiron of railways, none but the sturdiest of pedestrians, the most determined of cyclists can retrace the steps of Wesley and his horse and stand by the rocks and the natural amphitheatres in Cornwall and Northumberland, in Lancashire and Berkshire, where he preached his gospel to the heathen. Exertion so prolonged, enthusiasm so sustained, argues a remarkable man, while the organization he created, the system he founded, the view of life he promulgated, is still a great fact among us. No other name than Wesley’s lies embalmed as his does. Yet he is not a popular figure. Our standard historians have dismissed him curtly. The fact is, Wesley puts your ordinary historian out of conceit with himself. How much easier to weave into your page the gossip of Horace Walpole, to enliven it with a heartless jest of George Selwyn’s, to make it blush with sad stories of the extravagance of Fox, to embroider it with the rhetoric of Burke, to humanize it with the talk of Johnson, to discuss the rise and fall of administrations, the growth and decay of the constitution, than to follow John Wesley into the streets of Bristol, or on to the bleak moors near Burslem, when he met, face to face in all their violence, all their ignorance, and all their generosity, the living men, women, and children who made up the nation.

  No new facts about John Wesley are likely to be brought to light. He left abundant materials for his biographers in his journals, and his volumes of sermons are sufficiently exhaustive and clear as to the substance of his religious opinions. One of Wesley’s great merits was his lucidity in thought, speech, and style, so that he is not a man whose obscurity in expression might generate mistakes about him. Moreover, he admitted the world into the secrets of the inner motions of his soul and mind as far as he was able. In a word, there is no new thing, in the literal sense, to be learned about Wesley…. Wesley was a man of limitations, but without those limitations of mind and character he would not have accomplished the work he did. To dominate the serious middle-class intelligence of the eighteenth century, he was admirably adapted. The proof of his adaptation is in his achievement. He was, I take it, in a specially manifest way, an instrument of Providence; and this is further shown by the fact that so many of the earnest men who have been prominent in the great religious revival of the nineteenth century are the lineal descendants of those who in the eighteenth were identified with the general Methodist movement. Wesley helped materially in the gradual lifting of Anglo-Saxondom out of the Paganism in which it was wallowing part of the way on the road back towards a perfect Christianity. He is plainly a man of whom every educated person should have some knowledge; and I hope I have succeeded in telling his story, in comparatively few words, fairly, squarely, and readably.

  Wesley was a glorious being. His zeal was matchless; and he accomplished, by prodigies of mental and physical effort, a vast and necessary work. The physic may have been nasty,—those fits, especially,—but Methodism arrested national decay and infused new life into Christianity. In the political sphere, though Wesley’s direct intervention was not happily conceived, it is in every way probable that the influence of that high Tory over the masses did much to prevent an English analogue of the French Revolution by absorbing into the ranks of Methodism those who would naturally have been its leaders. The emancipation of the slaves, and, after that, other emancipations were the reflexion and the fruit of that inward emancipation of which Wesley was the preacher. The Evangelical movement, and the Oxford movement, in the Church of England, were both founded on the principle that religion was something other, something higher, than an aspect of civil life. This principle, which in the eighteenth century had been fairly lost, Wesley and his companions were bold enough to reassert. For this all English-speaking men, irrespective of creed, have cause to be thankful. To take a single illustration—may we not trace the abolition of the duel in England to Wesley’s influence? In every other European country the obligations of honour prescribe this reckless mode of settling certain disputes. Why is England exempt? The episode of the fashionable tailor is not an adequate explanation. The true reason is that the English conscience, as remodelled by Wesley, will not tolerate the making of widows and orphans on a frivolous pretext. However, Wesley was not precisely a saint. He was too active, too full of fight, to merit that description. But he was, pre-eminently a man.

  In his eighty-fifth year he acknowledges that he is not so agile as formerly, that he has occasional twinges of rheumatism and suffers slight dimness of sight, his other senses remaining unimpaired. “However, blessed be God,” he says, “I do not slack from my labour, and can preach and write still.” From being one of the worst hated he became one of the best loved men in the Kingdom. At Cork, where he had been mobbed and burned in effigy, he was met by a cortège of mounted horsemen. At Falmouth, where he had been taken prisoner by an immense mob, “roaring like lions,” high and low lined the street from one end of the town to the other, “out of love and kindness, gaping and staring as if the king were going by.” At Burslem the people gathered so early in the morning that he began to preach at half-past four. At Newgate he preached to forty-seven men under sentence of death, “the clink of whose chains was very awful.” He now ceased recording his receipts and expenditures in his account-book. His last entry is a remarkable one: “For upwards of eighty years I have kept my accounts exactly; I will not attempt it any longer, being satisfied with the continual conviction that I save all I can, and give all I can—that is, all I have.” It is estimated that he gave away over thirty thousand pounds which he had earned with his pen. His was a serene and sunny old age which mellowed as the years passed by. His early asceticism had long disappeared. One of his pious helpers complained that by Wesley’s witty proverbs he was tempted to levity. To a blustering fellow who attempted to throw him down, saying, “Sir, I never make way for a fool,” Wesley replied “I always do,” and politely stepped aside.

Marriage

  February 19.—Rev. Mr. John Wesley, to Mrs. Vazel, of Threadneedle Street, a widow lady of large fortune.

  The connection was unfortunate. There never was a more preposterous union. It is pretty certain that no loves lighted their torches on this occasion; and it is as much to be presumed, that neither did Plutus preside at the solemnity. Mrs. Wesley’s property was too inconsiderable to warrant the supposition that it was a match of interest. Besides, had she been ever so rich, it was nothing to him; for every shilling of her fortune remained at her own disposal; and neither the years, nor the temper of the parties, could give any reason to suppose them violently enamoured. That this lady accepted his proposals, seems much less surprising than that he should have made them. It is probable, his situation at the head of a sect, and the authority it conferred, was not without its charms in the eyes of an ambitious female. But we much wonder, that Mr. Wesley should have appeared so little acquainted with himself and with human nature. He certainly did not possess the conjugal virtues. He had no taste for the tranquility of domestic retirement: while his situation, as an itinerant, left him little leisure for those attentions which are absolutely necessary to the comfort of married life.

  Mr. Wesley’s constant habit of traveling…. the number of persons who came to visit him wherever he was, and his extensive correspondence with the members of the society were circumstances unfavourable to that social intercourse, mutual openness and confidence, which form the basis of happiness in the married state. These circumstances, indeed, would not have been so very unfavourable, had he married a woman who could have entered into his views, and have accommodated herself to his situation. But this was not the case. Had he searched the whole kingdom on purpose he would hardly have found a woman more unsuitable in these respects, than she whom he married.

  She seemed truly pious, and was very agreeable in her person and manners. She conformed to every company, whether of the rich or the poor; and she had a remarkable facility and propriety in addressing them concerning their true interests.

  Neither in understanding nor in education was she worthy of the eminent man to whom she was united; and her temper was intolerably bad. During the lifetime of her first husband, she appears to have enjoyed every indulgence; and, judging from some of his letters to her, which have been preserved, he paid an entire deference to her will. Her habits and spirit were ill adapted to the privations and inconveniences which were incident to her new mode of life, as the traveling companion of Mr. John Wesley.

  His wife traveled with him for some time, but soon very naturally grew dissatisfied with a life so restless and so incompatible with the taste and convenience of her sex. Unwilling to travel herself, she became equally dissatisfied with her husband’s habitual absence. Her discontent took at last the form of a monomaniacal jealousy. During twenty years she persecuted him with unfounded suspicions and intolerable annoyances, and it is among the most admirable proofs of the genuine greatness of his character that his public career never wavered, never lost one jot of its energy or success, during this protracted domestic wretchedness. She repeatedly deserted him, but returned at his own earnest instance. She opened, interpolated, and then exposed to his enemies his correspondence, and sometimes traveled a hundred miles to see, from a window, who accompanied him in his carriage. At last, taking with her portions of his journals and papers, which she never restored, she left him with the assurance that she would never return. His allusion to the fact in his journal is characteristically laconic. He knew not, he says, the immediate cause of her determination, and adds, “Non eam reliqui, non dimissi, non revocabo”—I did not forsake her, I did not dismiss her, I will not recall her. She lived about ten years after leaving him. Her tombstone commemorated her virtues as a parent and a friend, but not as a wife.

  His marriage was ill advised as well as ill assorted. On both sides, it was, to a culpable extent, hasty, and was contracted without proper and sufficient thought. Young people entering into hurried marriages deserve and incur censure; and if so, what shall be said of Wesley and his wife? They married in haste and had leisure to repent. Their act was, in a high degree, an act of folly; and, properly enough, to the end of life, both of them were made to suffer a serious penalty. It is far from pleasant to pursue the subject; but perhaps it is needful. In a world of danger like this, we must look at beacons as well as beauties.

  Her first marriage had been full of happiness from the simple cause that it was a union of two loving, sympathetic hearts, whereas there is abundant evidence to show that her subsequent wedding was the outcome of motives which, under the circumstances and peculiar conditions in which they both lived, could hardly have resulted otherwise than it did…. Absorbed by the work he had in hand, he failed to offer to his second love those demonstrations of affection to which she had been accustomed, and which alone make matrimony desirable. She, on the other hand, a highly-educated and sensitive lady, endowed with a considerable fortune, accustomed, as she had been, to the most devoted attentions of an affectionate husband, feeling the neglect of his successor (whether that neglect was unavoidable or not), and witnessing the honor and warm expressions of friendship lavished upon him by his admirers of both sexes, often riding with him in the carriage purchased with her money while she was left alone, could hardly fail to feel neglected by him who had vowed to “love and comfort, to honor and keep her in sickness and in health.” One does not wonder that marriage under such circumstances should turn out unhappily. What I wish to point out to your readers is that the fault was not solely on the side of the lady, as has been and still is, I fear, the fashion to affirm in this case—at any rate, the letter which you have published does not evidence much of that “softness” which Mr. Wesley says is the only influence by which “Love can be won.” I am not aware that man’s greatness tends to develop marital affection. Perhaps John Wesley was too great a man to cultivate such insignificant qualifications! There can be no doubt that the marriage turned out unfortunately; in fact, it was an instance of “marrying in haste and repenting at leisure.” Further, there is much better ground for believing that Mr. Wesley’s estrangement from his brother Charles was due rather to the intended marriage with his first love than his consummated union with Mrs. Vazeille.

  No doubt it was not an easy thing to be the wife of such a tireless enthusiast as John Wesley, especially when he was a second husband, when the marriage was barren of children. But no apology can excuse and no stretch of charity can condone the conduct of Mrs. Wesley. She was emphatically unworthy of the supreme position to which she was called.

  From the time of this wedding John Wesley seems to have experienced a kind of unrest. He had been used to take a severely ascetic view of marriage. At twenty-seven, he tells us, he held it unlawful for a priest to marry; and, at a later period, he could not disassociate a suspicion of impurity from the marriage bed. Whether he was still affected by this prejudice when he was wooing Miss Sophy, or thought it better to take her, impurity and all, rather than go without her agreeable society, is an enigma, and a difficult one. Anyhow, at forty-six, he had vanquished this scruple, and to wed or not to wed had come to be a question, not of lawfulness, but of expediency. By expediency must not be understood worldly prudence. Wesley, disregarding scriptural advice, hardly ever sat down to count the cost. But he saw no reason why he should not do as other men, and it was reasonable to conclude that he would make a much better husband, father, citizen, and friend than the vast majority of those who assumed marital responsibilities from worldly or carnal motives. Tyerman maintains that, if the woman he married had been worthy of him, he would have been one of the most loving husbands that ever lived. Perhaps so. No doubt he was, in his awkward way, affectionate. But sentiment, though too much disparaged by professional match-makers, is no adequate basis for marriage. To do him justice, Wesley never supposed that it was, but other considerations presented themselves when he was morally or actually committed to a choice recommended by sentiment alone.

As a Preacher

  My health advances faster than my amusement. However, I have been at one opera, Mr. Wesley’s. They have boys and girls with charming voices, that sing hymns, in parts, to Scotch ballad tunes; but indeed so long, that one would think they were already in eternity, and knew how much time they had before them. The chapel is very neat, with true Gothic windows; (yet I am not converted); but I was glad to see that luxury is creeping in upon them before persecution…. He spoke his sermon, but so fast, and with so little accent, that I am sure he has often uttered it, for it was like a lesson. There were parts and eloquence in it; but towards the end he exalted his voice, and acted very ugly enthusiasm…. Except a few from curiosity, and some honorable women, the congregation was very mean.

  I felt great satisfaction last week in hearing that veteran in the service of God, the Rev. John Wesley. At another time, and not knowing the man, I should almost have ridiculed his figure. Far from it now. I looked upon him with a respect bordering upon enthusiasm. After the people had sung one verse of a hymn, he arose and said: “It gives me a great pleasure to find that you have not lost your singing; neither men nor women. You have not forgotten a single note. And I hope, by the assistance of God, which enables you to sing well, you may do all other things well.” A universal “Amen” followed. At the end of every head or division of his discourse, he finished by a kind of prayer, a momentary wish as it were, not consisting of more than three or four words, which was always followed by a universal buzz. His discourse was short. The text I could not hear. After the last prayer, he rose up and addressed the people on liberality of sentiment, and spoke much against refusing to join with any congregation on account of difference in opinion.

  The travels of Mr. Wesley in the work of the ministry, for fifty years together, are I apprehend without precedent. During this period he traveled about four thousand five hundred miles every year, one year with another…. It had been impossible for him to perform this almost incredible degree of labor without great punctuality and care in the management of his time. He had stated hours for every purpose, and his only relaxation was a change of employment…. For fifty-two years or upward, he generally delivered two, frequently three or four, sermons in a day. But calculating at two sermons a day, and allowing as a writer of his life has done, fifty annually for extraordinary occasions, the whole number of sermons he preached during this period will be forty thousand five hundred and sixty. To these may be added an infinite number of exhortations to the societies after preaching, and in other occasional meetings, at which he assisted.

  Wesley you alone can touch; but will you not have the hive about you? When I was about twelve years old, I heard him preach more than once, standing on a chair, in Kelso churchyard. He was a most venerable figure, but his sermons were vastly too colloquial for the taste of Saunders. He told many excellent stories.

  Wesley’s own temperament was rather cold, and he had probably from that cold and calm nature, and the great self-control and presence of mind which he possessed, the power to awe, subdue, and thrill an audience. While Whitefield on many occasions preached dissolved in tears, and so moved vast numbers, the strong and determined will of Wesley was almost electrical in its influence and even frightful in its effects on the assemblages he preached before. Frequently, when he had concluded his discourse, the whole of his congregation appeared to be riveted to the ground, and not a person moved till he had retired.

  Wesley was not a pictorial or dramatic preacher like his great preaching contemporary, Whitefield; but whereas Whitefield, powerful preacher as he was, was yet more popular than powerful; Wesley, popular preacher as he was, was yet more powerful, in comparison with his fellows, than he was popular.

  He always preached in gown and cassock. He lacked the pathetic tone and the dramatic delivery of Whitefield. He had an essentially calm and logical mind. His speech, like Cobden’s, was conspicuously “unadorned.” He preached the Gospel with the least possible admixture of individual colouring. His very language was unusually Biblical, and he constantly used the ipsissima verba of Scripture. On the other hand, he had a sweet and penetrating voice, which could be distinctly heard at a measured distance of one hundred and forty yards. He had an ample command of the plainest, purest, and most powerful English. Beneath his calm exterior slept a very volcano of devotion to God and love to man. And his appeal was always directly and unmistakably to the human conscience.

  When the storm passed over, the “Symmonds” cast anchor in the Savannah River, near Coxpur Island, and one or two days afterwards the voyagers reached the town in safety, on February 5, 1736. On the seventh of March following John Wesley preached the first Methodist sermon every preached on this continent, not far from the site of the present Christ Church, Savannah, of which he subsequently was the third rector. It was addressed to a mixed assemblage. His congregation hardly exceeded four hundred persons, including children and adults, reënforced, however, by one hundred or more of the neighboring Indians. Wesley was then in the prime of his stalwart manhood. He was not robust in his physique, but shapely in his figure, measuring five feet ten inches in stature, and with a Roman physiognomy and a bearing not unbefitting a Roman Senator. He was, at this time, about thirty-four years old, and as he stood before his strange congregation he was an impressive figure. He discussed in a most eloquent manner the principles of Christian charity as argued by Saint Paul in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. Dr. Nunes, a Spanish physician and a Jew, was an interested listener to the sermon. He was frequently known in after life to say that this chapter of Saint Paul’s as expounded by Mr. Wesley, deserved to be written in letters of gold.

  Wesley’s fame as a preacher was somewhat obscured by the extraordinary power of Whitefield, whose dramatic eloquence attracted all classes. Yet the severity and overwhelming religious power of Wesley was such that men who would not submit to the claims of God as expounded by him did not dare to hear him. He attracted even larger congregations than Whitefield, and produced a more powerful and permanent impression…. No preacher since the days when Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, equaled him, on extraordinary occasions, in moral power, of which many instances are given by Southey.

Wesleyism

  My brothers are now become so notorious, that the world will be curious to know when and where they were born, what schools bred at, what colleges of in Oxford, and when matriculated, what degrees they took, and where, when, and by whom ordained. I wish they may spare so much time as to vouchsafe a little of their story. For my own part, I had much rather have them picking straws within the walls, than preaching in the area of Moorfields. It was with exceeding concern and grief, I heard you had countenanced a spreading delusion, so far as to be one of Jack’s congregation. Is it not enough that I am bereft of both my brothers, but must my mother follow too? I earnestly beseech the Almighty to preserve you from joining a schism at the close of your life, as you were unfortunately engaged in one at the beginning of it. It will cost you many a protest, should you retain your integrity, as I hope to God you will. They boast of you already as a disciple. They design separation. They are already forbidden all the pulpits in London; and to preach in that diocese is actual schism. In all likelihood, it will come to the same all over England, if the bishops have courage enough. They leave off the liturgy in the fields; and though Mr. Whitefield expresses his value for it, he never once read it to his tatterdemalions on a common. Their societies are sufficient to dissolve all other societies but their own…. As I told Jack, I am not afraid the Church should excommunicate him (discipline is at too low an ebb), but, that he should excommunicate the Church. It is pretty near it.

  A man of great views, great energy, and great virtues. That he awakened a zealous spirit, not only in his own community, but in a Church which needed something to quicken it, is acknowledged by the members of that Church itself; that he encouraged enthusiasm and extravagance, lent a ready ear to false and impossible relations, and spread superstition as well as piety, would hardly be denied by the candid and judicious among his own people. In its immediate effects the powerful principle of religion, which he and his preachers diffused, has reclaimed many from a course of sin, has supported many in poverty, sickness, and affliction, and has imparted to many a triumphant joy in death.

  Wesley’s object was to revive the spirit of religion in the Church of England. To this he thought himself called; for this he commenced and continued his labours.

  My present theme is Southey’s “Life of Wesley”—a theme much more copious, and one which interests me a good deal. How I shall succeed in it I do not yet know; it is no easy matter to give Wesley his due praise, at the same time that I am to distinguish all that was blamable in his conduct and doctrines; and it is a very difficult matter indeed to write on such a subject at all without offending one or both of the two fiercest and foolishest parties that ever divided a Church—the High Churchmen and the Evangelicals.

  Metastasio:  Strange stories are reported of one Wesley, who is permitted by the authorities to preach in the open fields.
  Alfieri.  Were not those whom you most venerate permitted by the Pagan authorities to preach both in the fields and in the cities? Wesley gave out no new Commandments: he opened before the eyes of the assembled thousands the small volume which contains them, and cried aloud, “Read! Read!” I know an Italian who would have spoken to them words of far different import in their own vernacular, and have said, “If you dare to read, go and be damned.” I am not highly fanatical, but I do bear veneration toward this saintly man, commanding by meekness and humility. He found the members of the Anglican Church putrescent, as Luther found the Papal; he used no knife of cautery.

  The first of theological statesman.

  No wonder that the clergy were corrupt and indifferent amid this indifference and corruption. No wonder that skeptics multiplied and morals degenerated, so far as they depended on the influence of such a king. No wonder that Whitfield cried out in the wilderness,—that Wesley quitted the insulted temple to pray on the hill-side. I look with reverence on those men at that time. Which is the sublimer spectacle,—the good John Wesley, surrounded by his congregation of miners at the pit’s mouth, or the queen’s chaplains mumbling through their morning office in their ante-room, under the picture of her great Venus, with the door opened into the adjoining chamber, where the queen is dressing, talking scandal to Lord Hervey, or uttering sneers at Lady Suffolk, who is kneeling with the basin at her mistress’s side?

  Wesley died at the head of a thoroughly organized host of 550 itinerant preachers, and 140,000 members of his societies, in the United Kingdom, British North America, in the United States, and West Indies.

  Wesley, nursed in the most exclusive church principles, kindled the flame of his piety by the devout reading of mystic books, when our university was marked by the half-heartedness of the time; and afterwards, when instructed by the Pietists of Germany, devoted a long life to wander over the country, despised, ill-treated, but still untired; teaching with indefatigable energy the faith which he loved, and introducing those irregular agencies of usefulness which are now so largely adopted even in the church. He too was an accomplished scholar, and possessed great gifts of administration; but whatever good he effected, in kindling the spiritual Christianity which checked the spread of infidelity, was not so much by argument as by stating the omnipotent doctrine of the Cross, Christ set forth as the propitiation for sin through faith in his blood.

  John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, with all his eccentricities and puerilities, was a man in whom there was much that was great and noble. He cannot, indeed, be ranked with some of those apostles of Christianity whose single object was to do good. He loved excitement, power, and praise. He allowed himself to think that he was the constant subject of miraculous interpositions, and that when his horse fell lame, or his head ached, a special interposition was wrought in his favour. He believed that people could be converted in dreams, or by visions to their waking senses, and that erring and fallible mortals could attain sinless perfection in this life. He seemed to suppose himself to have the power of healing diseases by faith and prayer; and though St. Paul was obliged to see Epaphroditus “sick nigh unto death,” yet that the health of his friends was a matter he could boldly claim of God. He allowed himself to fall into the foolish and reprehensible practice of divination and sortilege, and to entertain the absurd notion that every sort of diversion was sinful. He was inconsistent in his teaching, holding at one time that men were justified by faith, “including no good work;” and at another, that “repentance and works meet for repentance” must go before faith. But though inconsistencies may be found in his teaching, and littlenesses and follies in his conduct, yet Wesley was essentially an honest man, who laboured almost beyond example for the good of his fellow-creatures. For fifty years he continued his unabating, ungrudging toil, and the results were enormous. At his death, the members of his flock in England exceeded 71,000, in America 48,000, and he had 500 traveling preachers under his control.

  There are probably few names familiar to all Englishmen which have gathered round them associations so misleading as those which surround John Wesley. For those who take their impressions from hearsay, it is no more than a symbol for the religion of the illiterate. Others, to whom it is familiar through cursory mentions in the literature of the day, recall, on hearing a name coupled with Richelieu by Lord Macaulay, and with Luther by Mr. Buckle, vague notions of able ecclesiastical origination and controversial zeal. Neither view (if the following delineation be correct) can be accepted without large modification. Wesley reached the age of thirty-six without any exclusive devotion to the religious teaching of a particular class; his organizing power, great as it was, does not exhibit his character on its strongest side, while his advocacy of particular doctrines brings forward his weakest. Perhaps the founder of a sect is especially liable to misconception. The true representatives of a reformer are never those who call themselves by his name: what is remarkable in him is that he breaks through conventional barriers, what is remarkable in them is that they take the beaten track; and it is necessary, in order to understand him, to connect him with his cotemporaries rather than with his followers.

  He was not exactly a man of genius or a great writer; and in his younger days he would have seemed chiefly remarkable to the common observer for a certain degree of eccentricity and want of sense. Even good men would have remarked of him that he was always pushing his opinion to extremes. And his opinions were changing, for in the course of life he seems to have passed almost from one pole of theology to the other. Yet this was the man who has a greater present influence on the religion of the Christian world than any apostle or saint or prophet since the Reformation, perhaps it may be said with truth since St. Paul himself.

  It is remarkable that Wesleyanism has found so little favour in its founder’s own family. With the exception of some of their sisters, who became connected with the Society, John and Charles stood alone during their lifetime, so far as their relatives were concerned, and the majority of those who have since borne their name have adhered staunchly to the Church of England. This is as John himself would have had it, for he was no Separatist, though he could not stop the movement of which he was the mainspring; nor did he wish to do so, but he did not see that it would necessarily lead to secession. Blood, however, will tell, and a vast amount of talent and energy are still manifested in all the descendants of the Epworth family. Impetuous and quick-witted, and, perhaps, not overmuch given to take thought for the morrow, they must all be up and doing, and in these characteristics they vindicate their lineage, and the vigour of that original strain which is still so far from being worn out.

  His wise catholicity and broad and liberal sympathies are exemplified in the admiration which, at a time when the name excited detestation and disgust, Wesley expressed for Ignatius Loyola. Yet Wesley may, in some respects, be called the Loyola of the eighteenth century…. Like Loyola, Wesley was inflamed by an ardent zeal for religion; like him again he saw keenly the evils of the time and framed a remedy that could never be a panacea. His systematic mind was gifted with a peculiar power of giving permanent form to the excitement or enthusiasm of the moment. He began his career with no other project than that of raising up “a holy people;” but as his work grew beneath his hand, his intellect proved comprehensive enough to conceive a gigantic plan, and yet sufficiently minute to grasp the smallest details. And his organizing capacity was not greater than his administrative power. The structure of his Society was admirable, and his management of the machine in all the earlier years of his life showed a happy union of tact, firmness, and flexibility. He was not a dogmatic theologian, and he took no pleasure in philosophical speculation.

  Of that work, it has been well said, Methodism itself is one of the least significant results. True, at his death in 1791, his followers were counted by the thousand, and to-day are counted by the million. But even they were the least result of the Methodist revival. For its effects were felt far and wide in other directions. The Church of England awoke once more from its apathy and sloth, and its clergy roused themselves from lifelessness and contempt to a practical religious energy of which we still feel the force. And in the nation at large appeared a new moral enthusiasm which, rigid and pedantic though it often seemed, was still healthy in social tone, and whose power was seen in the partial disappearance of the open profligacy which disgraced the early Georgian era. Philanthropy, and social reform generally, received a fresh stimulus among the mass of the nation, a stimulus whose effects were afterwards seen in an amelioration of our penal code, more humanity in our prison life, and a feeling of indignation against negro slavery. Wesley helped also, we believe, very largely the growth of the national consciousness of the English people, by giving men something more to think about than their own individual aims and their own individual life. Especially was this the case among the poorer people, and it is curious to note how many leaders of the working classes have sprung from the ranks of Methodism.

  If Whitefield was the most persuasive and eloquent preacher of the early Methodists, John Wesley was incomparably the greatest man. He was a trained scholar, as well as an effective preacher, and he was an organizer, in this respect on a level with the most renowned leaders of the mediæval monastic orders.

  He came to see that the Spirit of God was not merely in the Bible, but in the souls of living men, giving light and life to the men of the eighteenth century as to those of the first. If this was fanaticism, it was fanaticism that for more than fifty years bore the strain of one of the most strenuous and perfectly organised lives ever lived.

  The Oxford methodists were assiduous in study (in 1731 John and Charles Wesley began a lifelong practice of conversing with each other in Latin); every night they met for consultation before supper; they relieved the poor, and looked after the clothing and training of school children; they daily visited the prisoners in the castle, read prayers there on Wednesdays and Fridays, preached there on Sundays, and administered the communion once a month. Their religion was formed on the prayer-book; next to the bible in point of doctrine they valued the books of homilies. Nor did they deny themselves recreation; it would be unjust to charge their temper as morbid; their philanthropy kept them in touch with real life; Wesley’s strong sense, his cheerfulness (he did not disdain a game of cards, as his private accounts show), and his knowledge of human nature, gave a manly tone to their zeal. The marked divergence of their subsequent careers, while showing reaction in some cases from an ideal overstrained, proves also that the discipline of strictness was not ruinous to the independence of individual minds. Wesley himself was little of an ascetic; to be methodical and exact was with him an essential part of happiness. He rose at four to cure himself of lying awake at night. At five, morning and evening, he spent an hour in private prayer. His diary and accounts were kept with constant precision. One day a week he allowed for friendly correspondence.

  Few men have more genuine claims to greatness than John Wesley, a many-sided man, but in all things the reformer. That really was his great work, although usually he is thought of only as the leader of an evangelistic movement, the preacher and crusader who founded the Methodist church. As a preacher, a critic, a teacher, and an organizer, Wesley was truly remarkable. Measured by what he accomplished, he was colossal. He was true to his own ideals, and his capacity for work is not to be measured by ordinary standards. Wesley earned two hundred thousand dollars by his writings, which is the smallest part of what he did in his long life. He gave away every penny of this. Spurgeon said of him: “When John Wesley died he left behind him two silver spoons in London, two in Bristol, a teapot, and the great Methodist church.” This church, with its seven million members—nine tenths of them in America—and its mission work extending throughout the world, is the magnificent monument of the great man who founded it.

General

  He never wrote merely to please, or to get money. His object constantly was, to inform the understanding, and mend the heart: to discourage vice, and promote virtue. He never published anything with a view to promote a party-spirit. A great degree of candor and liberality runs through all his publications; and in matters of mere speculation, he endeavored to show the necessity of christian love, and mutual forbearance among those who differ in opinion. In his controversies, he combated opinions, not men. And this he did, in general, with great moderation. He maintained, that even right opinions, make but a small part of religion: that, a man may hold the truth in unrighteousness, and therefore perish with the greater condemnation. But, a man whose heart, from a living faith in Christ operating as a practical principle, is influenced to the love of God and man, and whose life is correspondent to it, cannot err dangerously, though he may hold some erroneous opinions. And he thought, that we ought to contend for this christian temper and practice, much more earnestly, than for any speculative notions, not essentially necessary to obtain them. This made him earnest to contend for practical truth; and had a happy influence on all his writings…. Mr. Wesley’s treatise on “Original Sin,” is, perhaps, the most labored performance that he published. He knew, and respected the abilities and character of Dr. Taylor, his opponent. He bestowed much time and attention in a careful investigation of the subject; but avoided entering into minute metaphysical disquisitions. He knew that nothing could be affirmed in this way of reasoning, however true, but what another might deny with some degree of plausibility. His treatise therefore is, an animated defence of the orthodox doctrine, in a deduction from the actual state of morality in all ages, and under every kind of restraint from evil that has been imposed on mankind; or, as he expresses it, “from Scripture, reason, and experience.”

  As a logician he piqued himself, as we have seen, on his skill; and it must be allowed that his writings in general are distinguished by a remarkable force, acuteness, and vivacity of conception and expression. Yet, it is also remarkable that the doctrines which he most anxiously insisted on through life, were not only incapable of being moulded into any consistent system, but were, many of them, in direct opposition to each other. His tenet of assurance was decidedly Calvinistic; and one which could not, without great violence to common sense, be separated from the notion of absolute election. His doctrine of Christian perfection had as direct a tendency to make men Mystics or Antinomians; for what can be the use of ordinances to him who needs no further grace; and what is law to him who cannot sin? Yet Wesley was too good a logician to be a Calvinist; he was too pure and holy to fall into the Antinomian errors, and he had too cool a head to remain long a Mystic. How strange that he did not perceive that his eclectic divinity could not stand by itself, and that if he went thus far he must go farther! Nor is it easy to apprehend how his powerful mind, while it honestly lamented the disorders and vices, the pride, envy, and slander which prevailed in his societies, should not have perceived that the details of his discipline were of themselves calculated to generate such a spirit, and to undo, in a great measure, in the minds of his followers, the good which his preaching and example had produced in them.

  Mr. Wesley was a voluminous writer; and as he was one of the great instruments in reviving the spirit of religion in these lands, so he led the way in those praiseworthy attempts which have been made to diffuse useful information of every kind, and to smooth the path of knowledge to the middle and lower ranks of society.

  Wesley [“Journal”], you will find pleasant to dip into, I think: of course, there is much sameness; and I think you will allow some absurdity among so much wise and good.

  Whether men like Methodist doctrine or not, I think they must honestly concede that the old Fellow of Lincoln was a scholar and a sensible man. The world, which always sneers at evangelical religion, may please itself by saying that the men who shook England a hundred years ago were weak-minded, hot-headed enthusiasts, and unlearned and ignorant men. The Jews said the same of the apostles in early days. But the world cannot get over facts. The founder of Methodism was a man of no mean reputation in Oxford, and his writings show him to have been a well-read, logical-minded, and intelligent man.

  His own poetical powers were considerable; his verses are sometimes melodious, and often vigorous; but far above the trammels of art is their bold and grand sincerity. Music and poetry were to him only the means of expressing the joys and triumphs of faith.

  When one looks at his travelling, he may well wonder how Wesley found time to write; when one looks at his writings, the marvel is how he found time to do anything else.

  Wesley’s was a singular blending of strength and weakness. His strength lies almost entirely in the sphere of practice. He shows remarkable literary power; but we feel that his writings are means to a direct practical end, rather than valuable in themselves, either in form or substance. It would be difficult to find any letters more direct, forcible, and pithy in expression. He goes straight to the mark without one superfluous flourish. He writes as a man confined within the narrowest limits of time and space, whose thoughts are so well in hand that he can say everything needful within those limits. The compression gives emphasis and never causes confusion. The letters, in other words, are the work of one who for more than half a century was accustomed to turn to account every minute of his eighteen working hours.

  The poetical works of John and Charles Wesley extend through ten volumes, edited lately with scrupulous care by Dr. G. Osborn. Such a demand as he thus imposed on his own poetical powers was too extensive even for a great poet to have met; but in his case the difficulty was aggravated partly by the nature of the subject, partly by his own deficiencies…. Nevertheless there are two sources of inspiration from which hymn-writers in general and John Wesley in particular have derived a fire which makes it impossible to overlook the claims of the Wesleyan hymnology to be ranked as part of our national literature. First, however prosaic might be the soul of John Wesley himself, he had sufficient appreciation of the grandeur of the gift in others to appropriate it in some degree for his purposes. Such are some beautiful passages adopted or adapted from Gambold the Moravian and from George Herbert.

  As a poet, John Wesley, though correct and classical, does not compare with his brother Charles. While in college, he indulged in versification as a recreation, but confined himself almost exclusively to translations from other languages.

  The very last thing of which John Wesley was ambitious was literary fame. In nothing does the intensely practical character of his mind come out more strongly than in his writings. Whether it is long treatise or short tract, whether it is prose or poetry, whether it is original composition or the reprinting or abridging of the works of others, whether it is a simple school-book or one on controversial divinity, whether it is a sermon or a commentary or a journal, it is all the same; he has always some immediate practical end in view; and in almost every case we can trace the reason of his writing what he did write in the particular circumstances which were at that particular time before him…. It would, of course, be absurd to contend that anything which John Wesley wrote is of the same calibre as the great works of his contemporaries, such as Butler or Waterland; but if we are content to ignore his writings as obsolete works out of which all the virtue is gone, we are ignoring a very vivid and complete picture of the times, as well as a very life-like portrait of one of the most interesting and influential men of those times. So that merely from the historical, to say nothing of the religious, point of view, it would be a great mistake to be satisfied with regarding Wesley as he appears when filtered through the mind of any critic or biographer, however able, without contemplating him as he appears in his own pages.

  His mind was not without something of the mysticism that dominated Law; it has a strain of melancholy which does not lessen our interest, and he presents the rare spectacle of a scholar who dreaded lest his own scholarship might interfere with the popular work which was the supreme aim of his life. There was a certain Puritanism in the conscious simplicity of his style; but he could not divorce himself altogether from that literary sympathy that linked him to his age, and that made him the friend of one with whom he stands in many respects so much in contrast as Johnson.

  There is a peculiar interest attached to this hymn. (“Thou Hidden Love of God”). John Wesley is said to have translated it in Savannah, in the United States, where he suffered much and was grievously tormented by his ill-starred passion for a certain Miss Sophy. It was with special reference to the continually obtruding thoughts of this Miss Sophy that the Rev. John composed the verse “Is there a thing beneath the sun?” It seems to have been efficacious, and the lovelorn poet came home to meet a worse fate at the hands of her whom, for his Karma, he was allowed to make Mrs. Wesley. The Hymn has helped thousands who never knew of Wesley and his ill-fated loves to acts of consecration and self-sacrifice from which they would otherwise have shrunk.

  Where the reader of the journal will be shocked is when his attention is called to the public side of the country—to the state of the jails—to Newgate, to Bethlehem, to the criminal code—to the brutality of so many of the judges, and the harshness of the magistrates, to the supineness of the bishops, to the extinction in high places of the missionary spirit…. No man lived nearer the centre than John Wesley. Neither Clive nor Pitt, neither Mansfield nor Johnson. You cannot cut him out of our national life. No single figure influenced so many minds, no single voice touched so many hearts. No other man did such a life’s work for England. As a writer he has not achieved distinction, he was no Athanasius, no Augustine, he was ever a preacher and an organizer, a laborer in the service of humanity; but happily for us his journals remain, and from them we can learn better than from anywhere else what manner of man he was, and the character of the times during which he lived and moved and had his being.