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JOHN WESLEY
MAKERS OF
METHODISM

BY

W. H. WITHROW

 

NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS
CINCINNATI: CURTS & JENNINGS
 

sg CopyriGHT BY EATON & Mains, 1898. &

 

The General Cabinet of the Epworth League, who select the books
for the Epworth League Reading Course, thereby commend the general
thought contained in them. They do not wish, however, to be held respon-
sible for every detail of treatment and statement which may occur in the

volumes, EDWIN A. SCHELL, General Secretary.
CHAPTER

I.
Il.

Il.
IV.

VI.
VII.

VIII.
IX.
X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

CONTENTS

A FOREWORD, - a

THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND IN THE TIME

OF THE WESLEYS,
SUSANNA WESLEY, -

JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY—FOUNDERS OF
METHODISM,

JOHN NELSON, THE YORKSHIRE MASON,
SILAS TOLD, THE PRISONERS’ FRIEND,

GEORGE WHITEFIELD, THE GREAT EVAN-
GELIST, -

SELINA, COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON,
JOHN FLETCHER AND MARY BOSANQUET,

THE BEGINNINGS OF METHODISM IN THE
NEw WORLD,

Dr. COKE, THE FATHER OF METHODIST
MISSIONS,

FRANCIS ASBURY, THE PIONEER BISHOP OF
AMERICA, - - - -

SoME EARLY PREACHERS AND BISHOPS OF
AMERICAN METHODISM - - . =
5

PAGE

14
27

47
98
113

127
150

165

195

216

252

284
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
John Wesley, - frontispiece
Susanna Wesley, - 7 < 26
Epworth Rectory, - - 35
John Wesley at the Age of 23, - 48
Christ Church College and Wolsey’s Gate, Oxford, SI
Entrance to Hall of Christ Church College, Oxford, 53
St. Mary’s Church, Oxford, - - 55
Gateway of St. Mary’s Church, Oxford, 58
John Wesley at 40, 68
Interior of St. Mary’s Church, Oxford, - 73
Radcliffe Library, Oxford, 75
City Road Chapel, London, 78
Wesley in His Old Age, 87
Charles Wesley, - gl
Wesley Memorial Tablet, Westminster Abbey, 95, 97
George Whitefield, 129
Barbara Heck, 199
Captain Webb, - 205
The Rev. Dr. Thomas Coke, - - - 217
Francis Asbury, - 7 253
Birthplace of Francis Asbury, 257
Freeborn Garrettson, - - - E - 285
Bishop Whatcoat, = - - - - = 298
Bishop McKendree, - - - - - - - 300
Bishop Emory,-  - = * * = = 308
MAKERS OF METHODISM

I
A Foreword

METHODISM is, in a very special sense, the
child of Providence. It is a happy feature in
its history that it was not cradled in conflict,
but was born of a religious revival. The origin
of the Reformed Churches in Bohemia, in Ger-
many, in Switzerland, in France, in the Neth-
erlands, in Scotland, was amid the throes of
civil war. This gave a degree of hardness to
certain aspects of religion and left a heritage of
bitter memories. While it developed much of
moral heroism, it also developed much of the
sterner side of our nature, and sometimes
evoked vindictive passions. No one can be
familiar with the stirring tale of the conflict
between Romanism and Protestantism and of
the strifes between different sections of the
Reformed religion without seeing and lament-
ing that often reproach was brought upon the
cause of Christ by the passionate zeal and lack

of charity of Christian men. Persecution upon
9
MAKERS OF METHODISM

one side sometimes led to persecution on the
other. Even the valor and fidelity of such
heroes as Ziska and Gustavus Adolphus, of
William the Silent and Admiral Coligny, of
Cromwell and Knox, of Zwingle and of Duke
Maurice of Saxony, were not unmarred by ele-
ments of human harshness and infirmity.

But, in the providence of God, Methodism
had a milder and happier development. Not
that it was without persecution and suffering.
It had enough of both to develop the grandest
heroism, the most intrepid fortitude, and the
noblest endurance even unto death. Yet it
never appealed to the sword. Like the great
founder of Christianity, it turned its cheek to
the smiter; it suffered with a quietness of spirit
the very tyranny and rage of its foes. No
tinge of iconoclastic zeal or of retaliating
sternness mars the saintly character of the
Wesleys and their fellow-helpers. Their spirit
was that of St. John, breathing the benedic-
tions of love. The motto of John Wesley was
typical of his life and ministry: ‘‘ With charity
to all, with malice to none.”

Methodism was first of all a revival of pure
religion in the hearts of a group of earnest
young students of Oxford University. They
had no wish to create a new sect or to make

war upon the Church they loved. They sought
10
A FOREWORD

its spiritual awakening and reformation. They
preached from the parish pulpits, and when
thrust from the Church of their fathers they
preached on their fathers’ graves, on the village
common, in the market place, and by the way-
side.

Methodism was not the result of political
exigencies or of ecclesiastical councils. It was
not framed by kings or potentates, by bishops
or priests. Like its blessed Lord, it was born
in lowliness, and grew in favor with God and
with man. Many different types of character
were among the agents whom God used in its
development—the lofty and the lowly, the
gentle and the simple, the learned and the
illiterate, the rich and the poor. Among its
founders were some of the most scholarly fel-
lows of Oxford. Among its faithful preachers
were also ‘‘unlearned and ignorant men,” as
the world measures learning. There were such
men as John Nelson, the Yorkshire mason; as
Silas Told, the converted sailor; as Samuel
Bradburn, the shoemaker’s apprentice; as John
Hunt, the rustic plowman; and as Francis
Asbury, the blacksmith’s assistant. From the
lowly walks of life came many of the boldest
soldiers of this new crusade—men who, like
the herdsman of Tekoa, came from following

the oxen and the plow; men from the smithy
II
MAKERS OF METHODISM

and the loom; husbandmen and fishermen,
like the first disciples of our Lord; men from
the mine and from the moor. Yet were there
also those of wealth and noble rank, as Lord
Dartmouth, Lord St. John, Mary Bosanquet,
and the Countess of Huntingdon, and others in
high places who, like the Magi, laid their
wealth and titles at the feet of Jesus.

But, for the most part, this great revival
came with its revelations of love to the souls of
the poor. The common people heard it gladly.
To the great heart of suffering humanity—bur-
dened with its sorrows and its sins, with its
sordid cares as to what it should eat, and what
it should drink, and wherewithal it should be
clothed; with its immortal hunger which the
husks of this world could not satisfy; with its
divine thirst that the broken cisterns of earthly
pleasure could not appease—came the emanci-
pating message of salvation, came the bread of
heaven and the water of life. ‘For ye see
your calling, brethren, how that not many wise
men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many
noble, are called: but God hath chosen the
foolish things of the world to confound the
wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of
the world to confound the things which are
mighty.”

In the pages that follow we shall select a few

12
A FOREWORD

examples of the noble men and women whom
God raised up on both sides of the sea to carry
out his purposes of grace—to perform a great
work in the world.

We cannot attempt anything like a complete
history of the great world-movement of Meth-
odism. That would require many volumes
larger than this. The selection of certain
Makers of Methodism involves the omission of
others perhaps as noteworthy as some whom
we present. We have endeavored to maintain
historic sequence, although the periods treated
have of necessity, in some cases, overlapped.
The study of a few prominent actors in this
great movement will illustrate its spirit as a
whole, will give unity and interest to the nar-
rative, and will prevent the distraction caused
by the attempted characterization of a great
number of persons.

As to authorities, we are chiefly indebted to
the biographers of the several persons here
sketched; to Bangs’s, Stevens’s, and Buckley’s
histories of Methodism; to the autobiographies
of Mary Bosanquet, John Nelson, Jesse Lee,
Nathan Bangs, and others; to Tyerman’s Wes-
ley, and to many review and encyclopedia
articles.

wo

13
MAKERS OF METHODISM

II

The Condition of England in the Time of the
Wesleys

IT is difficult to get a clear conception of the
conditions amid which Methodism won _ its
earliest triumphs. We may best succeed by
comparing them with the conditions of to-day.
The contrast between the tinder box and
tallow dip of the last century and the lucifer
match and the electric heht, between the lum-
bering coach or carrier’s cart and the express
train and electric trolley, is typical of much
moral as well as material progress. The won-
derful invention of Watt, the greatest of the
eighteenth century, has more than realized the
wildest legends of Aladdin’s lamp and _ the
magician’s ring. Applied to the printing press
ithas given wings to knowledge wherewith it
may fly to the ends of the earth.

A journey to Land’s End or to John O'Groat’s
House a hundred years ago was as difficult as
one to St. Petersburg or to Constantinople is
now. Clive’s great Indian victory was unknown
at the company’s office in London for many

months after it was achieved; to-day the tidings
14
CONDITION OF ENGLAND

of an irruption of the hill tribes of India or of a
revolt of the Mahrattas throbs along the electric
nerve of the world from Calcutta to Vancouver.
The people of Shetland were found praying for
George II when his successor had been a year
on the throne; to-day the queen's speech is
hawked about the streets of Montreal and
Chicago on the very day it wakes the applause
of St. Stephen’s palace, and the President's
message is read simultaneously in London and
San Francisco. We are disappointed if last
evening’s news from Bucharest and Vienna,
from Paris and Berlin, from Peking and Tokyo,
with yesterday's quotations from the bourses of
Frankfort and Hamburg and the exchanges of
Chicago and New York, are not served with the
coffee and toast at breakfast.

A century ago books and newspapers were
the luxury of the few; they are now the neces-
sity of all. No man of his age did more than
John Wesley to give a cheap literature, that
characteristic of our times, to the people. He
wrote himself one hundred and eighty-one dif-
ferent works, two thirds of which sold for less
than a shilling each. They comprised histories,
dictionaries, and grammars of several languages,
editions of the classics, and the like. He estab-
lished the first religious magazine in England.

His manly independence hastened the abolition
5
MAKERS OF METHODISM

of the literary patronage of titled know-noth-
ings and of obsequious dedications to the great.
He appealed directly to the patronage of the
people, and found them more munificent than
Augustus or Mecenas, than Leo X or Lorenzo
the Magnificent. He anticipated Raikes by
several years in the establishment of Sunday
schools. The Tract Society and the Society
for the Diffusion of Christian Knowledge but
carried out more fully the plans of usefulness
which he had inaugurated. In imitation of the
Moravian Brethren he also actively promoted
the cause of Christian missions, but these were
only the germs of those magnificent enterprises
which, in our time, have brought forth such
glorious fruit. The present century is espe-
cially the age of missions. Never since the
days of the apostles have men exhibited such
tireless energy, such quenchless zeal, in going
forth to preach the Gospel to every creature.
The miracle of Pentecost seems repeated, as by
means of the various Bible societies men of
every land can read in their own tongue,
wherein they were born, the word of God.

The condition of public and private morals
during the early part of the eighteenth century
was deplorable. The veteran premier Walpole
unblushingly asserted the doctrine that every

man has his price; and his conduct was con-
16
CONDITION OF ENGLAND

formable to his theory. Borough-mongering
was openly practiced, and places at court and
in the Church, in the army and navy, were
shamelessly bought and sold. It was by no
means uncommon to find ensigns in the cradle,
who grew to be colonels in their teens. ‘‘ Carry
the major his pap” was a byword. Charles
Phillips states that one of Provost Hutchinson’s
daughters was gazetted a major of a cavalry
regiment.

Few things are more painful to contemplate
than the moral obtuseness of the court of the
early Georges. From the king to the lackey
there seems to have been an almost entire ab-
sence of moral sense. The card table was the
main resource from exnuz. Faded dowagers sat
late into the night playing the magic cards.
The Newmarket races were the haunt of prof-
ligacy and vice. So also were the favorite re-
sorts of Bath and Tunbridge Wells. Immense
sums were lost and won in bets. The fash-
ionable literature to be found in fine ladies’
boudoirs was such as few now care to acknowl-
edge having read. Intemperance was a pre-
vailing vice. No class was free from its con-
tamination. ‘The ermine of the judge and the
cassock of the priest were alike polluted by the
degrading practice. The dissipation of the

lower classes was almost incredible. Smollett
17
MAKERS OF METHODISM

tells us that over many of the spirit-vaults in
the streets of London might be seen the in-
scription, ‘‘ Drunk for a penny; dead drunk for
twopence; straw (to sober off on) for nothing.”

Profane swearing was awfully prevalent. The
judge swore upon the bench, the lawyer swore
in addressing the jury, the fine lady swore over
her cards, and it is even said that those who
wore the surplice swore over their wine. ‘‘ The
nation was clothed with cursing as with a gar-
ment.” The profligacy of the soldiers and
sailors was proverbial. The barrack room and
ship’s forecastle were scenes of grossest vice, for
which the cruel floggings inflicted were an in-
efficient restraint. Robbers waylaid the traveler
on Hounslow Heath and footpads assailed him
in the streets of London. In the northern part
of the island reaving, raiding, and harrying
cattle still often occurred. On the southwest-
ern coast, before the Methodist revival, wreck-
ing—that is, enticing ships upon the rocks by
the exhibition of false signals-——was a constant
occurrence, and was frequently followed by the
murder of the shipwrecked mariners. Although
the mining population of the kingdom was
greatly benefited by the labors of the Wesleys
and their coadjutors, still their condition was
deplorable. Many were ina condition of gross-

est ignorance, their homes wretched hovels,
18
CONDITION OF ENGLAND

their toil excessive and far more dangerous than
now, their amusements brutalizing in their ten-
dency. Even women and children underwent
the drudgery of the mine. For no class of
society has Methodism done more than for
these.

The introduction of gas has greatly restricted
midnight crime in the cities. A hundred years
ago they were miserably dark, lit only by oil
lamps hung across the streets. Link boys
offered to escort the traveler with torches.
Riotous city ‘‘Mohawks” haunted the streets
at midnight, roaring drunken songs, assaulting
belated passengers, and beating drowsy watch-
men, who went their rounds with a ‘‘ lanthorn”
and duly announced the hour of the night—
unless they were themselves asleep. Bear and
badger baiting was a favorite amusement, as
was also prize fighting. Even women, forget-
ting their natural pitifulness and modesty,
fought in the ring.

One of the greatest evils of the time was the
condition of the laws affecting marriage. Prior
to 1754 a marriage could be celebrated by a
priest in orders at any time or place, without
notice, consent of parents, or record of any
kind. Such marriages fell into the hands of
needy and disreputable clergymen, who were

always to be found in or about the Fleet Prison,
19
MAKERS OF METHODISM

where they were or had been confined for debt.
It was proved before Parliament that there had
been 2,954 Fleet marriages in four months.
One of these Fleet parsons married 173 couples
in asingle day. The scandal reached its worst
in the seaports when a fleet arrived, and the
sailors were married, says Lecky, in platoons.
The state of religion previous to the Wes-
leyan revival was deplorable. Even of pro-
fessed theologians but few were faithful to their
sacred trust, and these bemoaned, with a feel-
ing akin to that of Nehemiah and the exiled
Jews, that the house of the Lord was laid waste.
One of these, the venerable Archbishop Leigh-
ton, of pious memory, in pathetic terms laments
over the national Church as ‘‘a fair carcase with-
out spirit.” A sneering skepticism pervaded
the writings of Bolingbroke and Hobbes, of
Hume and Gibbon. ‘The principles of French
philosophy were affecting English thought. In
the universities a medizeval scholasticism pre-
vailed. Even the candidates for holy orders
were ignorant of the Gospels. A hireling priest-
hood often dispensed the ordinances of the
Church, attaching more importance to mere
forms than to the spirit of the Gospel—to the
wearing of a surplice than to the adorning of
the inner man. Some of them were more at

home at the races, at a cockpit, at a hunting
20
CONDITION OF ENGLAND

or a drinking party, than in their study or their
closet. It must not, however, be supposed that
there were no redeeming features to this dark
picture. The names of Butler, Lowth, Watts,
and Doddridge would cast a luster over any age.
But they, alas, only made the surrounding dark-
ness seem more dark.

At this time the Wesleys entered upon their
sacred mission. They carried the tidings of
salvation to regions where it was before un-
known. Amid markets, fair grounds, and coal
pits they boldly proclaimed their message. On
the mountains of Wales, among the tin mines
of Cornwall, on the chalk downs of Surrey, in the
hop fields of Kent, in the fenlands of Lincoln-
shire, in the cornfields of Huntingdon, on the
wolds of Wiltshire, and among the lakes of
Cumberland they proclaimed the joyful tidings
to eager thousands. They adapted themselves
to the capacity of miners and pitmen, of un-
couth rustics and rude fishermen. They recog-
nized in the ignorant and embruted the sublime
dignity of manhood. From the ranks of those
who were rescued from degradation and sin
arose a noble band of fellow-workers—earnest-
souled and fiery-hearted men; men who feared
not death nor danger, the love of Christ con-
straining them.

Nor was this new apostolate without confess-
2I

4
MAKERS OF METHODISM

ors unto blood and martyrs unto death. They
were stoned, they were beaten with cudgels,
they were dragged through the kennels, and
some died of their wounds. They were every-
where spoken against. Even bishops, as War-
burton and Lavington, assailed them with the
coarsest and most scurrilous invective. But,
like the rosemary and thyme, which, ‘‘ the more
they be incensed,” to use the words of Bacon,
‘the more they give forth their sweetest odors,”
so those holy lives, under the heel of persecu-
tion, sent forth a sacred incense unto God whose
perfume is fragrant throughout the world to-
day. ‘Thus the influence spread till its great
originator ceased at once to work and live.

The penal code of England in the eighteenth
century was of savage ferocity. Its laws, like
those of Draco, were written in blood. The
death penalty was inflicted not only for murder,
but also for treason, forgery, theft, and smug-
gling; and it was often inflicted with aggrava-
ting terrors. Among the causes of the increase
of robbers Fielding lays much stress on the
frequency of executions, their publicity, and
their habitual association in the popular mind
with notions of pride and vanity, instead of
guilt, degradation, or shame.

The turnkeys of Newgate were said to have
made £200 by showing Jack Sheppard. Dr.

22
CONDITION OF ENGLAND

Dodd was exhibited for two hours in the press
room ata shilling a head before he was led to
the gallows. The criminal sentenced to death
was encouraged and aided to put a brave face on
the matter, and act on the maxim, Carpe diem—
‘‘Hat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die.”
Boys under twelve were hanged for participation
in the Gordon riots of 1780. Mentioning the
circumstance of Rogers, Mr. Grenville rather
naively added: ‘‘I never in my life saw boys cry
so.” ‘*When Blackstone wrote,” says Mr. Lecky,
‘«there were no less than one hundred and sixty
offenses in England punishable with death, and
it was a very ordinary occurrence for ten or
twelve culprits to be hung on a single occasion,
for forty or fifty to be condemned at a single
assize.”

Persons now living can remember the gibbet-
ing of murderers till the ravens devoured their
flesh and their bones rattled in the wind. Politi-
cal offenders were still more harshly dealt with.
The gory heads of knights and peers were im-
paled on Temple Bar and their dismembered
limbs on London Bridge.

Suicides were thrown into dishonored way-
side graves, transfixed with stakes, and crushed
with stones. The pillory and stocks still stood
on the village green. Flogging was publicly

inflicted by the beadle of the parish. The num-
23
MAKERS OF METHODISM

ber of executions was enormous. In 1785, in
London alone, it was ninety-seven. After a
jail delivery at Newgate scores of miserable
wretches were dragged on hurdles up Tyburn
Hill amid the shouts and jeers of a ribald mob,
who either mocked the mortal agonies of the cul-
prits or exhorted their favorites to ‘‘ die game,”
as the phrase was.

Those exhibitions, so far were they from de-
terring, actually promoted vice. Mountebanks,
gamblers, and jugglers plied their nefarious
callings under the very shadow of the gallows
and in the awful presence of death. On the
outskirts of the throng John Wesley or Silas
Told often exhorted the multitude to prepare for
the great assize and the final judgment.

The condition of the prisons was infamous.
Prisoners for debt were even worse lodged than
condemned felons, and both were exposed to
the cupidity and cruelty of a brutal jailer. In
1773 John Howard was appointed sheriff of
Bedford. The horrible state of the prison
pierced his soul. He forthwith burrowed in all
the dungeons in Europe and dragged theirabom-
inations to ight. They were the lairs of pesti-
lence and plague. Men were sentenced not to
prison only, but also to rheumatism and typhus.
Howard bearded the fever demon in his den and
fell a victim to his philanthropy, but through

24
CONDITION OF ENGLAND

his efforts and those of Mrs. Fry, Fowell Bux-
ton, and others a great reform in the state of
prisons has taken place. Methodism did much
for the prisoners. The Wesleys sedulously
visited them, and Silas Told, the sailor convert
of John Wesley, gave himself exclusively to this
work.

In the following pages we will sketch briefly
some of the Makers of Methodism; some of the
men and women who in the providence of God
were to change the moral aspect of Great
Britain; who were to save the kingdom from
an eclipse of faith and a possible carnival of
blood akin to the French Revolution, which
overturned both throne and altar in the dust;
who were to impress upon the age, both in the
Old World and the New, the stamp of a higher
Christian civilization; who were to go forth
with a passionate charity to remember the for-
gotten, to visit the forsaken, to lift up the fallen
from a condition little better than that of beasts
to the dignity of men and the fellowship of
saints; who were to carry the everlasting Gos-
pel to earth’s darkest and remotest bounds;
who were to bring to the dull ear of the world

“The songs of the Holy City,
The chimes of eternal peace.”
 

SUSANNA WESLEY.
‘©The Mother of Methodism.”
SUSANNA WESLEY

III

Susanna Wesley

THE record of woman’s work and woman’s
influence in the Christian Church forms one of
the noblest and most inspiring chapters in its
history. No branch of the Church has been
richer in holy and devoted women than has
Methodism. To mention only a few of the
illustrious names of its early years, we have
Susanna Wesley; Selina, Countess of Hunting-
don; Lady Maxwell; Mary Fletcher; Grace
Murray; Dinah Evans, the heroine of Adam
Bede ; and Barbara Heck, the foundress of Meth-
odism in both the United States and Canada.

One of the most notable of these, and most
influential on the destiny of Methodism,* was
Susanna Wesley. She fulfills the poet’s ideal
of true womanhood:

“A perfect woman, nobly planned
To warn, to comfort, and command ;
And yet a spirit still, and bright
With something of an angel light.”

 

* ‘The mother of the Wesleys,’’ says Southey, ‘was also the Mother of
Methodism.”’
27
MAKERS OF METHODISM

In the quiet rectory at Epworth, often amid
straitened circumstances and manifold house-
hold cares, she molded the character of those
distinguished sons who were destined to orig-
inate a great religious movement which should
regenerate the age in which they lived, and
send its waves of beneficent influence to farthest
shores and remotest times.

In the eyes of some it will be a feature of
additional interest in the history of Susanna
Wesley that she was ‘‘nobly related,” but
no circumtances of rank or birth can increase
the luster of her character. She was the
daughter of Dr. Samuel Annesley, who was a
nephew of the Earl of Anglesea, a noble lord
whose pedigree goes back to the Norman con-
quest. Her father was noted at Oxford for his
piety and zeal. He entered the ministry of the
national Church and acted as a chaplain at sea.
He subsequently preached in Kent and in two
of the largest congregations in London, and.
was also lecturer at St. Paul’s.

When the Act of Uniformity was passed, in
1662, Dr. Annesley was one of the two thousand
English rectors and vicars who, for their fidelity
to the dictates of couscience, were driven from
their parishes and were persecuted throughout
the realm. He becamea prominent leader among

the ejected Nonconformists, preaching almost
28
SUSANNA WESLEY

daily and finding food and shelter for many of
his impoverished brethren. After a half-cen-
tury’s service and many sore trials, from which
he never shrank, he died on the last day of the
year 1696, exclaiming, ‘‘ I shall be satisfied with
thy likeness; satisfied—satisfied.” He was be-
loved and revered by all who knew him; and on
her deathbed, his noble relative, the Countess of
Anglesea, requested to be buried in his grave.
From such pious parentage was Susanna
Wesley descended. The energy of character
and intellectual vigor which she inherited she
transmitted to her illustrious sons. She re-
ceived under her father’s care an education
superior to that of most young women of her
own or, indeed, of the present time. She was
acquainted with the Greek, Latin, and French
languages, and exhibited a discriminative judg-
ment of books. An illustration of her early
maturity of thought and independence of char-
acter is seen in the fact that, before her thir-
teenth year, she had examined the ground of
controversy between churchmen and dissenters.
She adopted the principles of the Established
Church, and renounced the views on account of
which her father had been driven from the
parish and for which he had espoused a life of
suffering and persecution. This change of

opinion, however, produced no interruption
3 29
MAKERS OF METHODISM

of the loving intercourse between the affec-
tionate father and his favorite child.

Miss Annesley, about the year 1689, being
then in her nineteenth or twentieth year, was
married to the Rev. Samuel Wesley, the hard-
working curate of a London parish, who was in
receipt of an income of only thirty pounds a
year. The Wesleys were also an ancient fam-
ily; probably, as is inferred from the ‘‘ scallop
shell” upon their coat of arms, descended from
crusading ancestors. It is remarkable that
both the father and grandfather of the Rev.
Samuel Wesley were clergymen of the Estab-
lished Church, who, refusing to obey the Act
of Uniformity, were driven from their homes
and pulpits. By the Five Mile Act they were
prohibited from approaching their former par-
ishes or any borough town. Driven from place
to place, fugitives and outcasts for conscience’
sake, they preached wherever they could, en-
during persecutions similar to those with which
the early Methodists were afterward so fa-
miliar. Four times was the father of Samuel
Wesley thrown into prison—once for six and
again for three months; and at length he sank
into the grave at the early age of thirty-four.
His aged father, heart-broken by his griefs and
sorrows, soon followed him to heaven. Of

such godly stock, on the side of both father and
30
SUSANNA WESLEY

mother, familiar with persecutions and strength-
ened in character by trial and sufferings, was
the founder of Methodism born.

A portrait of Susanna Wesley, taken not long
after her marriage, presents a fair young face,
with delicate features, of refined expression
and almost classic regularity of outline, and
with bright, vivacious eyes. A profusion of
long and curling hair adorns a head of singu-
larly graceful pose, ‘‘ not without an air,” says
Dr. Abel Stevens, ‘‘ of the high-bred aristocracy
from which she was descended.” A beautiful
hand and arm support a book upon her breast.
Her dress is simple, yet tasteful, like that of a
well-bred lady of the period, equally removed
from the worldly fashions of the time and from
the ascetic severity which characterized some
of the women of early Methodism. Dr. Adam
Clarke describes her as not only graceful, but
beautiful. One of her sisters was painted by
Sir Peter Lely as one of the ‘‘ beauties” of the
age, but she is admitted to have been less
refined in feature than Mrs. Wesley.

But the more enduring attractions of her
well-stored mind, and of her amiable and pious
disposition, surpassed even those of her person.
She possessed a correct literary taste and sound
judgment. She projected several literary works,

which, however, the duties of a busy life pre-
31
MAKERS OF METHODISM

vented her carrying into effect. Among these
was one on natural and revealed religion, com-
prising her reasons for renouncing Dissent, and
a discourse on the Eucharist. A fragment,
which is still extant, on the Apostles’ Creed,
‘‘would not,’’ says a competent critic, ‘‘ have
been discreditable to the theological literature
of the day.”

Her sincere and earnest piety was her most
striking characteristic. She nourished her soul
by daily meditation on the word of God and by
prayer. To this purpose an hour every morn-
ing and evening were devoted. Her letters to
her children and her counsel to her sons on
questions of grave religious importance evince
at once the clearness and the correctness of her
judgment. The respect with which her views
were received by her cultured and filial sons
proves the weight which they attached to her
opinions.

The poetical faculty with which John and
especially Charles Wesley were so highly en-
dowed was derived from their father rather
than from their mother, who has left no special
proof of talent in this direction. With the Rev.
Samuel Wesley, on the contrary, ‘beating
rhymes,” as he called it, was almost a mania.
He was a man of extraordinary literary indus-

try, and poem after poem came in rapid succes-
32
SUSANNA WESLEY

sion from his pen. These found their way
into print by the aid of Dunton, a London pub-
lisher, who had married a daughter of Dr. An-
nesley. He rendered Mr. Wesley, however,
more valuable service by making him ac-
quainted with Susanna Annesley, his future
wife. Pope knew the elder Wesley well, and
commends him to Swift as ‘‘a learned man
whose prose is better than his poetry.” His
longer poems were a ‘‘ Life of Christ” and a
‘« History of the Old and New Testaments,”
written in rather doggerel rhymes; but his
most able production was a learned Latin dis-
sertation on the Book of Job. He possessed
the rare distinction of having dedicated volumes
to three successive queens of England.

One of these dedications procured him the
presentation to the rectory of Epworth, with a
stipend of two hundred pounds a year. This
was a piece of great good fortune, for, as he
wrote to the Archbishop of York, ‘‘he had had
but fifty pounds a year for six or seven years
together, and one child, at least, per annum.”
Yet he welcomed each addition to his family as
a gift from God, and bravely struggled to pro-
vide bread for the constantly increasing number
of hungry mouths.

Even when living with his wife and child in

lodgings in London, on an income of thirty
33
MAKERS OF METHODISM

pounds a year, his sturdy and hereditary inde-
pendence was manifest. He was offered pre-
ferment by the court party if he would read
from the pulpit King James the Second’s famous
Declaration of Indulgence. But believing it to
be a design to favor the Roman Catholics, as
indeed it was, he not only refused to read it,
but denounced it in a sermon on the words of
the three Hebrew children concerning the
golden image of Nebuchadnezzar. The High
Church notions of Samucl Wesley, like those of
his wife, were the result, therefore, of convic-
tion, and not of self-interest.

In the little rectory of Epworth was repro-
duced one of the noblest phases of what Cole-
ridge has called the one sweet idyl of English
society—life in a country parsonage. Here in
a quiet round of domestic joys and religious
duties was trained, for usefulness and for God,
a numerous family, numbering in all nineteen
children. Mr. Wesley was zealous in pulpit
and pastoral labors and bold in rebuking sin,
whether in lofty or lowly. Evil livers, to
whom the truth was obnoxious, soon resented
his plainness. They wounded his cattle, twice
set fire to his house, and fired guns and shouted
beneath his windows. For a small debt he was
arrested, while leaving his church, and thrown

into prison, where he remained three months.
34
SUSANNA WESLEY

‘* Now I am at rest,” he wrote from his cell
to the Archbishop of York, ‘‘for I have come
to the haven where I have long expected to be.”
But he immediately began to minister to the
spiritual wants of his fellow-prisoners, to whom

 

EPWORTH RECTORY,

he read prayers daily and preached on Sunday.
He was greatly sustained by the sympathy and
fortitude of his noble wife. ‘‘It is not every-
one,” he wrote again to the archbishop, ‘‘ who
could bear these things; but, I bless God, my

wife is less concerned with suffering them than
35
MAKERS OF METHODISM

I am in writing, or than, I believe, your grace
will be in reading them.” ‘‘ When I came
here,” he writes again, ‘‘my stock was but
little above ten shillings, and my wife at home
had scarce so much. She soon sent me her
rings, because she had nothing else to relieve
me with, but I returned them.”

The Epworth rectory was a humble, thatch-
roofed building of wood and plaster, and vener-
able with moss and lichen, the growth of a
hundred years. It had a parlor, hall, buttery,
three large upper chambers, with some smaller
apartments, and a study, where, we are told,
the rector spent most of his time ‘‘ beating
rhymes” and preparing hissermons. The man-
agement of the domestic affairs, together with
the often vexatious temporalities of the tithes
and glebe, he left to his more practical and capa-
ble wife. That rectory family was a model Chris-
tian household. Godly gravity was tempered
by innocent gayety, and the whole suffused with
the tenderest domestic affection. ‘‘ They had
the common reputation,” says Dr. Clarke, ‘of
being the most loving family in Lincolnshire.”

The center and presiding genius of this fair
domain was Susanna Wesley. Likethe Roman
matron, Cornelia, she cherished her children,
of whom she had thirteen around her at once,
as her chief jewels. Te all bore pet ‘‘ nick-

3
SUSANNA WESLEY

names,” which were fondly used, like an uttered
caress, in the family circle and in the copious
correspondence that was kept up after they
left home. The noblest tribute to this loving
mother is the passionate affection she inspired
in her children.

Her son John writes to her from Oxford, at a
time when her health was precarious, in strains
of loverlike tenderness, and hopes that he may
die before her, that he may not endure the
anguish of her loss.

‘““VYou did well,” she wrote him, in uncon-
scious prophecy, ‘‘ to correct that fond desire of
dying before me, since you do not know what
work God may have for you to do before you
leave the world.”

By her daughters she was beloved almost
with filial idolatry. Death and sorrow many
times entered that happy home and several of
the nineteen children died young, but upon
the survivors was concentrated the affection of
as warm a mother’s love as ever throbbed in
human breast. The children’ seem to have
been worthy of that mother. They were all
intelligent; some of them noted for their
sprightliness and wit, and others for their
poetic faculty, and several of the girls were
remarkable for their beauty and vivacity. Fun

and frolic were not unknown in this large
37
MAKERS OF METHODISM

family of healthy, happy children, and the great
hall of the rectory became an arena of hilari-
ous recreations. ‘*Games of skill and chance,
even,” says Dr. Stevens, ‘‘were among the
family pastimes, such as John Wesley after-
ward prohibited among the Methodists.”

But maternal affection never degenerated
into undue indulgence. The home discipline
was firm, but not rigorous; strength, guided by
kindness, ruled in that happy household. Mrs.
Wesley superintended the entire early education
of her children, in addition to her other numer-
ous household cares. Her son John describes
with admiration the calmness with which she
wrote letters, transacted business, and con-
versed, surrounded by her numerous family.
She has left a record of her mode of govern-
ment and instruction.

‘The children,” she says, ‘‘ were always put
into a regular method of living in such things
as they were capable of from their birth, such
as in dressing, undressing, etc. They were
left in their several rooms awake, for there was
no such thing allowed in the house as sitting
by a child till it fell asleep. From the time
they were one year old they were taught to cry
softly, if at all, whereby they escaped much
correction, and that most odious noise of the

crying of children was rarely heard. The will
38
SUSANNA WESLEY

was early subdued, because,” she judiciously
observes, ‘‘ this is the only strong and rational
foundation of a religious education, without
which both precept and example will be in-
effectual. But when this is thoroughly done,”
she continues, ‘‘then a child is capable of being
governed by the reason and piety of its parents
till its own understanding comes to maturity
and the principles of religion have taken root
in the mind.”

So early did this religious training begin that
the children were taught ‘‘to be quiet at family
prayer, and to ask a blessing at table by signs,
before they could kneel or speak.” At five
years old they were taught to read. One day
was allowed for learning the letters—a feat
which each of them accomplished in that time,
except two, who took a day and a half, ‘“ for
which,” says the mother, ‘‘I then thought
them very dull.” As soon as they could spell
they were set reading the Scriptures, and kept
at the appointed task till it was perfectly mas-
tered. One of the girls, we are told, was able,
in her eighth year, to read the Greek language.

The culture of the heart was no less sedu-
lously observed than the culture of the mind.
‘‘The family school opened and closed with
singing. At four o’clock in the afternoon all

had a season of retirement, when the oldest
39
MAKERS OF METHODISM

took the youngest that could speak, and the
second the next, to whom they read the psalm
for the day and a chapter of the New Testa-
ment. She herself also conversed each evening
with one of her children on religious subjects,
and on some evenings with two, so as to com-
prehend the whole circle every week.” The
hallowed influence of those sacred hours is in-
calculable.

A high-souled sense of honor was cultivated
in the hearts of the children. If any of them
was charged with a fault, he was encouraged to
ingenuous confession, and on promise of amend-
ment was freely forgiven. The result of this
pious home training was seen in the character it
produced. Ten of the children reached adult
years, and everyone of them became an earnest
Christian, and, after a life of singular devotion,
died at last in the triumphs of faith. <‘‘Sucha
family,” says Dr. Adam Clarke, ‘‘I have never
heard of or known, nor, since the days of Abra-
ham and Sarah, and Joseph and Mary of Naza-
reth, has there ever been a family to which the
human race has been more indebted.”

This noble woman was deeply concerned for
the spiritual welfare of her neighbors as well as
of her own household. While her husband was
confined in prison she opened the doors of her

house for religious service. Sometimes as many
40
SUSANNA WESLEY

as two hundred were present, while many others
went away for want of room. To these she
read the most awakening sermons she could
find, and prayed and conversed with them.
Wesley's curate and some of the parishioners
wrote to him against the assembly as a ‘‘ con-
venticle.” She vindicated her course in a letter
of sound judgment and good taste. ‘ The
meetings were filling the parish church,’’ she
said, ‘‘ with persons reclaimed from immorality,
some of whom had not for years been seen at
service.” As to the suggestion of letting some
one else read, she wrote: ‘‘ Alas! you do not
consider what these people are. I do not think
one man among them could read a sermon
through without spelling a good part of it; and
how would that edify the rest?” But with a
true wife’s recognition of the rightful authority
of her husband, she says, ‘‘ Do not advise, but
command me to desist.”

The tranquil rectory at Epworth was not,
however, without its visitations of sorrow.
Time after time death visited its charmed
circle till nine of the loved household were
borne away. And there were sadder things,
even, than death to mar its happiness. The
beauty and native graces of several of the
daughters led to marriages which proved unfor-

tunate. In anguish of soul their. sympathizing
41
MAKERS OF METHODISM

mother writes thus to her brother of this sad-
dest sorrow which can befall a woman’s life:
‘“‘Q, brother! happy, thrice happy are you.
Happy is my sister, that buried your children
in infancy, secure from temptation, secure from
guilt, secure from want or shame, secure from
the loss of friends. Believe me, it is better to
mourn ten children dead than one living, and I
have buried many.”

The pinchings of poverty, also, were only too
familiar in this family, and sometimes even the
experience of want. The shadow of debt hung
over it, and beneath that shadow Mr. Wesley
sank into the grave. Although the living of
Epworth was nominally valued at £200, it did
not realize more than £130. How, even with
the utmost economy, such a large family was
clothed, fed, and educated on this meager
stipend is one of the most extraordinary cir-
cumstances in its history. Yet these privations
were borne not complainingly, but cheerfully.
In a letter to the Archbishop of York this
noble woman was able to say that the experi-
ence and observation of over fifty years had
taught her that it was much easier to be con-
tented without riches than with them.

It has been already stated that the rectory was
twice fired by the disaffected rabble of the parish.

It was on the second of these occasions that the
42
SUSANNA WESLEY

future founder of Methodism was snatched,
as by a special providence, almost from the
jaws of death. Mrs. Wesley, who was in feeble
health, was unable to make her escape, like
others of the family, by climbing through the
windows of the burning building. Thrice she
attempted to fight her way through the flames
to the street, but each time was driven back by
their fury. At last, with scorched and branded
hands, she escaped from the fire.

It was now found that little John Wesley was
missing. Several times the frantic father strove
to climb the burning stairs to his rescue, but
they crumbled beneath his weight. The im-
periled child, finding his bed on fire, flew to
the window, where two of the neighbors, stand-
ing one upon the shoulders of the other, plucked
him from destruction at the very moment that
the burning roof fell in, and the house became
a mass of ruins. Everything was lost—the
furniture and clothing of the household and the
precious books and manuscripts of the studious
rector. But the Christian and the father rose
supreme above it all. ‘‘Come, friends,” he
exclaimed, as he gathered his rescued family
around him, ‘‘let us kneel down and thank
God; he has given me all my eight children;
I am rich enough.”

The grateful mother consecrated the child so
43
MAKERS OF METHODISM

providentially rescued to the service of God.
‘«T do intend,” she subsequently wrote, ‘‘ to be
more particularly careful of the soul of this
child, that thou hast so mercifully provided for,
than ever I have been, that I may do my
endeavor to instill into his mind the principles
of true religion and virtue. Lord, give me
grace to do it sincerely and prudently, and
bless my attempt with good success.”

While her boys were absent at the Charter-
house School and at Oxford University this
loving mother kept up a constant correspond-
ence with them. Her letters are marked by a
special solicitude for their spiritual welfare.
‘* Resolve to make religion the business of your
life,” she wrote to her son John. ‘I heartily
wish you would now enter upon a strict exami-
nation of yourself, that you may know whether
you have a reasonable hope of salvation by
Jesus Christ. If you have, the satisfaction of
knowing it will abundantly reward your pains;
if you have not, you will find a more reasonable
occasion for tears than can be met with in any
tragedy.” With such a mother, and with such
counsels, small wonder that her sons became a
blessing to their race.

After the death of her husband this saintly
soul was spared for many years to aid by her

wise counsels the novel and often difficult de-
44
SUSANNA WESLEY

cisions of her sons. When the ‘irregularities ”
of field preaching were complained of she rec-
ognized the hand of Providence in the circum-
stances which made it a necessity, and stood by
her son on Kennington Common as he pro-
claimed the Gospel to twenty thousand persons.

Adjoining the old foundry, the mother-chapel
of Methodism, John Wesley had fitted up a
residence for himself and his assistants in
London. Here with filial affection he brought
his revered and beloved mother, and sustained
her declining years with the tenderest care.
When unable to attend the services she could
hear the singing and prayer that almost daily re-
sounded through that historic building. Here,
in the seventy-third year of her age, she peace-
fully passed away. ‘‘She had no doubt, no
fear,’ writes her son, ‘‘nor any desire but to
depart and be with Christ.”

John Wesley and five of her daughters stood
around her dying bed and commended her soul
to God in prayer. When unable to speak she
looked steadfastly upward, as if, like Stephen,
she saw heaven open before her. With her
last words she requested that her children
should sing as she departed a psalm of praise to
God. With tremulous voices they obeyed her
last request, and her spirit took its flight from

the toils and the travails of earth to the peace
4 45
MAKERS OF METHODISM

and blessedness of paradise. Her ashes sleep
with those of the many illustrious dead of Bun-
hill Fields; and at City Road Chapel a simple
marble monument commemorates her virtues.

Her noble life needs no words of eulogy.
Her own works praise her. Her children rise
up and call her blessed. Many daughters have
done virtuously, but she has excelled them all.
Her life of toil and trial, of privation and
self-denial, of high resolve and patient continu-
ance in well-doing, has been crowned with a
rich and glorious reward. The hallowed teach-
ings of that humble home originated a sacred
impulse that quickened the spiritual life of
Christendom from that day to this. The puls-
ing tides of its growing influence shall roll
down the ages and break on every civilized and
savage shore till the whole world is filled with
the knowledge of God.

The house in which John and Charles Wesley were born 1s still
used as the rectory of the parish of Epworth. It is externally some-
what changed, a roof of tiles having taken the place of that of thatch
of the olden time. It is at present occupied by Canon Overton,
a liberal churchman, who has himself written a sympathetic life of
John Wesley. The canon kindly gives courteous permission to the
pilgrims to this Mecca of Methodism to visit the church and rectory.
A few summers ago a number of Epworth Leaguers from the United
States were cordially welcomed to these historic scenes. In this
birthplace of Methodism the Wesleyan Methodists have a commo-
dious and elegant chapel and schools.

46
JOIN AND CHARLES WESLEY

IV

John and Charles Wesley—Founders of Methodism

Tuer Epworth rectory may well be called the
cradle of Methodism. The group of boys and
girls who gathered around the knees of Susanna
Wesley may not unfitly be regarded asa type
of the great family of Epworth Leaguers who
are being trained up in the household of Metho-
dism in Christian culture and Christian service.

Of the nineteen children of Samuel and Su-
sanna Wesley several were in after life distin-
guished for piety, intelligence, and scholarship.
Others were remarkable for wit and vivacity.
The eldest son, Samuel, became a very learned
clergyman and author of some noble hymns.
Others also had poetic talent. Several of the
children died in childhood, but thirteen of
them were living at one time, and must have
made the old Epworth rectory alive with
youthful fun and frolic.

Two members of this remarkable family have
won world-wide fame as the chief founders of
Methodism. John Wesley, the elder of the
two, born in 1703, is described as having a

boyish turn for wit and humor. His brother
47
MaKERS OF METHODISM

Charles, five years younger, was exceedingly
sprightly and active, and remarkable for cour-
age and skill in juvenile encounters with his
school-fellows. We have already described the

 

JOHN WESLEY AT THE AGE OF 23.

home training of this first Methodist household
and the providential rescue of little John Wesley
from destruction by fire.

When only thirteen years old ‘‘ Jacky,” as he
is named in his mother’s letters, left the shelter-

ing rooftree of the Epworth rectory for the
48
JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

cloisters of the Charterhouse School, London.
This was an old monastery, founded five hun-
dred years ago. After its dissolution by Henry
VIII it became the family seat of the Howards
and the court of Queen Elizabeth and of King
James. It was converted into a school for forty
boys and an asylum for eighty poor gentlemen.
It has an annual revenue of $150,000. Among
its famous scholars were Addison, Steele, Black-
stone, Wesley, Grote, Havelock, and Thackeray.
In Wesley's day the food for the brain was better
than that for the body, and Jacky was nearly
starved. He obeyed the wise counsel of his
father, that he should run around the large gar-
den three times a day. He thus got up an ex-
cellent appetite, even if he did not get very
much to gratify it.

In three years he entered Christ Church Col-
lege, Oxford, where he continued his classical
studies. He became Greek lecturer at the univer-
sity when a little more than twenty-three years
old. In Hebrew, too, he was one of the best schol-
arsoftheage. About this time he was joined by
his younger brother Charles. When John was
twenty-eight and Charles was twenty-three the
famous ‘‘Holy Club” wasformed. It consisted of
a little group of students who met together for the
study of the Greek Testament, for self-examina-

tion, and prayer. Their methodical lives led to
49
MAKERS OF METIHODISM

their receiving the epithet of ‘‘ Methodists,” a
name of contempt which was destined to become
one of highest honor.

While Epworth rectory may be called the
cradle of Methodism, it was at Oxford that it
received its strong impress of intellectual cul-
ture. It must never be forgotten that it was in
the first university of Europe that this child of
Providence was fostered and trained. They
were no illiterates, those Fellows of Oxford
who met for the study of the oracles of God in
their original tongues. With the instincts of
true learning, having kindled their torches at
the altar fire of eternal truth, they went forth
to diffuse the light, to illumine the darkness,
and as heralds to proclaim the dawn of a new
day. The university crest has in this connec-
tion a prophetic significance. It is an open
Bible with the motto, ‘‘DOMINVS ILLVMINATIO
MEA”’—The Lord is my Light. Though the
mission of Methodism has been largely like that
of the Christ of Nazareth, to preach the Gospel
to the poor and lowly, it has been the better able
to do this because it has sought to

“Unite the pair so long disjoined—
Knowledge and vital piety.”

Amid the stately surroundings of Oxford—

that city of colleges which has trained so many
50
    
 

 
 

OT
Beil i

CHRIST CHURCH COLLEGE AND WOLSEY’S GATE, OXFORD.
MAKERS OF METHODISM

of the English scholars and statesmen—the
Wesleys, Whitefield, Coke, and other early
Methodist leaders received that broad culture,
that sound classical learning, that strict logical
training, which so efficiently equipped them for
the great life work they were todo. This lends
special interest to a visit to this Mecca of Metho-
dist pilgrimage.

This venerable seat of learning, dating from
the time of Alfred, the ancient Oxenforde—its
cognizance is still a shield with an ox crossing a
stream—has a singularly attractive appearance
as seen from a distance, its many towers and
spires and the huge dome of the Radcliffe
Library rising above the billowy sea of verdure
of its sylvan surroundings. A nearer approach
only heightens the effect of this architectural
magnificence. Probably no city of its size in the
world presents so many examples of stately and
venerable architecture as this city of colleges.
Look in what direction you will, a beautiful
tower, spire, or Gothic fagade will meet the eye.

As we walk the smooth-turfed quadrangles
and traverse the ivy-clad cloisters and the long
rows of collegiate buildings, and visit the alcoved
library, the great halls, and the college chapels,
we gain some suggestions of the atmosphere of
learning by which the founders of Methodism

were surrounded.
52
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‘syuil

 

 

 

 

 

ENTRANCE TO HALL OF CHRIST CHURCH COLLEGE, OXFORD,
MAKERS OF METHODISM

Christ Church College, of which the Wesleys
and Whitefield were students, is the largest and
most magnificent college at Oxford. It owes its
splendor to the munificence of Cardinal Wolsey,
by whom it was founded when he was in the
zenith of his prosperity. One enters Christ
Church through Wolsey’s ‘‘ Faire Gate,” well
worthy of the name.

St. Mary’s Church, in whose pulpit John
Wesley often preached, is invested with some
of the most memorable associations of the
Reformation. From its pulpit Wyclif de-
nounced the Romish superstitions of his day,
and maintained the right of the laity to read
the word of God, the true palladium of their
civil and religious liberty. Two centuries later,
when Romish influence was in the ascendant at
the university, the martyr-bishops, Cranmer,
Ridley, and Latimer, were cited here for trial
before Cardinal Pole, 1555; and hither the fol-
lowing year the venerable Archbishop Cranmer
was brought from prison for the purpose of pub-
licly recanting his Protestant opinions.

‘‘He that late was primate of all England,”
says Foxe, ‘‘attired ina bare and ragged gown,
with an old square cap, stood on a low stage
near the pulpit. After a pathetic prayer,
stretching forth his right hand, instead of the

expected recantation he said, ‘Forasmuch as
o4
 

 

 

 

 

ST. MARY’S CHURCH, OXFORD,
MAKERS OF METHODISM

my hand offended in writing contrary to my
heart, my hand, therefore, shall be first pun-
ished, for it shall be first burnt.’ Having thus
‘flung down the burden of his shame,’ he was
dragged from the stage, with many insults, to
the place where he glorified God in the flames,
after having been compelled to witness the mar-
tyrdom of Latimer and Ridley.”

The Wesleys were familiar with this sacred
spot. With Whitefield and others of the
‘“‘Holy Club” they also regularly visited the
felons in the public prison. Within these
gloomy dungeons the martyr-bishops, Cranmer
Latimer, and Ridley, were confined, and from
it they walked to their funeral pyre. Here, we
may be sure, the Wesleys often mused, catch-
ing inspiration from the example of those heroic
men, and willing, if need were, to die like them
for the Lord they loved so well.

The ivy-mantled gateway of St. Mary’s
Church is an object of strikingly picturesque
beauty. The image of the Virgin above it gave
great offense to the Puritans, and was one of the
causes of the impeachment of Archbishop Laud.

But we must return to the personal history of
John Wesley. In due course he was ordained a
minister of the Established Church, and fora
time aided his father, then sinking under the

weight of years, at Epworth.
56
JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

On his father’s death he was invited to suc-
ceed him as rector. He was also requested to
go with his brother as a missionary to Georgia.
The decision rested upon the consent of his

venerable mother. ‘‘I can be,” he said, ‘‘ the
staff of her age, her chief support and com-
fort.” But the heroic soul, notwithstanding

her lonely widowhood, replied, ‘‘ Had I twenty
sons, I should rejoice that they were all so
employed, though I should never see them
again.”

On board the ship by which the brothers
sailed to the New World were a number of Ger-
man Moravians with their bishop. The vessel
became at once ‘‘ Bethel church and a semi-
nary.” Daily prayer and preaching, the study
of the Scriptures and Christian divinity, and in-
structing the children filled up the hours.
During a terrific storm, which greatly alarmed
the English passengers, the pious Moravians,
even the women and children, sang calmly on,
unafraid to die—a lesson which the Oxford Fel-
lows had not yet learned.

Arrived in Georgia, the Wesleys devoted
themselves with zeal to their missionary toil.
They lived the lives of ascetics. ‘‘They slept
on the ground rather than on beds; they refused
all food but bread and water, and John went

barefooted, that he might encourage the boys of
57
MAKERS OF METHODISM

his school—a condescension better in its motive
than in its example.” The matter-of-fact colo-

 

GATEWAY OF ST. MARY'S CHURCH, OXFORD.

nists did not appreciate such ascetic piety, and
the Wesleys soon found it expedient to return

to England.
58
JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

“‘T went to America,” wrote John Wesley in
his Journal, ‘‘to convert the Indians, but, O,
who shall convert me? I have a fair summer
religion; I can talk well, nay, and believe my-
self, while no danger is near; but let death
look me in the face, and my spirit is troubled,
nor can I say to die is gain.” Yet he con-
tinued to preach and pray, though suffering
great disquietude of soul. He renewed his
acquaintance with the Moravians by attending
their services in London. One evening a lay-
man was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle
to the Romans. Wesley writes: ‘‘I felt my
heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in
Christ, and 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.” Thus not until his
thirty-fifth year did he obtain that full assurance
of faith which he so long had sought, and which
he was to preach, a flaming herald of the cross,
throughout the land. ‘‘It is scarcely an exag-
geration to say,” writes Lecky in his History of
England in the Eighteenth Century,‘ that the scene
which took place in that humble meeting in
Aldergate Street forms an epoch in English his-
tory. The conviction which then flashed upon one
of the most powerful and active intellects in Eng-

land is the true source of English Methodism.”
59
MAKERS OF METHODISM

Deeply impressed with the piety of the Mora-
vians, Wesley determined to visit their chief
settlement at Herrnhut, in Bohemia. His soul
was strengthened by their devout companion-
ship. ‘‘ I would gladly,” he said, ‘‘ have spent
my life here, but my Master calling me to labor
in other parts of his vineyard, I was constrained
to take my leave of this happy place.”

A new note was now heard in his sermons.
To the condemned felons of Newgate, as well as
to the decorous congregations in the churches,
he preached repentance, the remission of sins,
andfreesalvation. Joined by his brother Charles
and George Whitefield, he went everywhere
preaching with strange power this new evangel
of the grace of God.

In 1739 John Wesley dedicated the first place
of worship for the people called Methodists, and
organized the first Methodist society. His own
account of this important event is as follows:
‘‘Tn the latter end of the year 1739 eight or ten
persons came to me in London, and desired that
I would spend some time with them in prayer
and advise them how to flee from the wrath to
come; this was the rise of the United Society.”
This is recorded as the epoch of Methodism
from which its corporate organization dates.

The origin of any important institution, the

birthplace of any great movement or great man,
60
JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

will ever engage the profoundest attention of
the human mind. Hence men visit with eager
interest the cradle-lands of the race, they con-
template with patriotic pride the field of Runny-
mede, they make long pilgrimages to the hum-
ble cottage in which the Bard of Avon or the
Bard of Ayr was born. With not less reverent
feelings should we visit the cradle of the great-
est religious movement of modern times.

The first home of Methodism was, indeed,
very humble, suggesting analogies with the
lowly beginnings of Christianty itself—the man-
ger of Bethlehem and the cottage home of Naz-
areth. Earlyin 1739 John Wesley was urged to
secure the old Foundry, Moorfields, London, as
a place of worship. This was a large, ram-
bling pile of buildings, near the site of the pre-
sent City Road Chapel. Wesley's only regular
income was £28 a year, from his Oxford fellow-
ship. The sum required for the purchase of
the Foundry was £115; but, full of faith, he as-
sumed the debt, and, some friends coming to his
aid, nearly £700 was expended in fitting it up
for worship. Instead of the clang of anvilsand
roar of furnaces, employed in the manufacture
of the deadly enginery of war, its walls were to
echo to the holy hymns and the glad evangel of
the Gospel of peace.

Part of the building was fitted up with desks
5 61
MAKERS OF METHODISM

for a school. Here for seven years Silas Told
taught a number of charity children, from six
in the morning till five in the evening, for the
salary of ten shillings a week. Part was after-
ward fitted up as a book room for the sale of
Mr. Wesley’s publications. A dispensary and
almshouse for the poor was also part of the es-
tablishment, where, in 1748, were nine widows,
one blind woman, and two poor children. ‘I
might add,” says Wesley, ‘ four or five preach-
ers, for I myself, as well as the other preachers
who are in town, diet with the poor, on the
same food and at the same table; and we re-
joice therein, as a comfortable earnest of our
eating bread together in our Father’s kingdom.”
A savings bank and loan fund were also estab-
lished. High up near the roof were apartments
for Mr. Wesley, in which his mother died.
There was also accommodation for the assistant
preachers and for domestics.

To this rude and ruinous structure, in the
dark London mornings and evenings, multi-
tudes of God-fearing Methodists wended their
way by the dim light of their candle or oil lan-
terns, over the ill-paved streets, to the services;
and here multitudes of souls were converted to
God. The Foundry society numbered, in 1743,
no less than twenty-two hundred members,
meeting in sixty-six classes.

62
JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

The ‘‘ irregularities” of the new apostle soon
caused the closure of many churches against
him. Charles Wesley was ejected from his
curacy and threatened with excommunication
by the Archbishop of Canterbury. When driv-
en from the churches, the zealous evangelists
went everywhere preaching the word—in the
market places, on the hillsides, on the broad
commons, wherever men would listen, and often
where they would not.

John Wesley was soon called to sanc-
tion a new departure—that of lay preaching.
Thomas Maxfield, one of his gifted helpers,
during Wesley’s absence from the Foundry in
London, occupied the pulpit—to the great bene-
fit of the large congregations. Wesley hear-
ing of this new irregularity, and strong in his
sentiments of churchly order, hastened to Lon-
don to put a stop to the innovation. His wise
mother, however, read the signs of the times
with a profounder sagacity than her learned
son. ‘‘ Take care what you do to that young
man,” she said; ‘‘he is as surely called of God
to preach as you are,’ and she counseled him
to hear and judge for himself. ‘‘ It is the Lord.
Let him do what seemeth to him good,” the
stanch churchman remarked, and another of
his old prejudices was swept away. He at once

recognized Maxfield as a son in the Gospel.
63
MAKERS OF METHODISM

Lady Huntingdon wrote of the eloquent preach-
er, ‘‘God has rised from the stones one to sit
among the princes of his people.’”’ Thus was be-
gun that great army of lay helpers who have done
so much in the old world and the new to carry
on the triumphs of Methodism.

A no less important institution was soon
originated in Bristol; namely, the Methodist
class meeting. The organizing genius of Wesley
—no less, says Macaulay, than that of the great
Cardinal Richelieu—began to form his adher-
ents into little groups for mutual edification
and prayer, and for receiving systematic and
regular contributions for the growing expenses
of the Methodist societies. ‘‘ This,’’ writes Mr.
Wesley, ‘‘ was the origin of our classes, for
which I can never sufficiently praise God. The
unspeakable usefulness of the institution has
ever since been more and more manifest.”

Excluded from the Epworth Church, where
his own father had so long been rector, John
Wesley took his stand upon his father’s tomb-
stone, and day after day preached with such
power and pathos that many of his hearers
‘lifted up their voices and wept,” and several
dropped down as if dead.

Shut out almost entirely from the pulpits of
the Church established by law, and Methodist

classes and societies springing up in all direc-
64
JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

tions, John Wesley framed the General Rules
of the United Societies, which have become a
part of the constitution of the Methodist Churches
throughout the world. This is one of the most
simple and catholic formule of faith recorded in
the annals of Christendom. As John Wesley
remarks in his Journal, ‘‘O, that we may never
make anything more or less the term of union
with us but the having the mind that was in
Christ, and the walking as he walked.”
Traveling preachers and lay helpers rapidly
multiplied, and chapels were, in course of time,
erected in the chief centers of population. But
while many heard the word gladly others were
moved to intensest hostility. The persecutions
of the early Methodists were akin to those of the
primitive Christians. ‘‘At Sheffield,” John
Wesley writes, ‘‘ hell from beneath was moved
to oppose us.”” Stones and other missiles were
thrown into the church. To save the building
and the people he gave notice that he would
preach out of doors, and look the enemy in the
face. A military officer rushed at the elder
Wesley and presented hissword at the preacher's
breast. Wesley, undaunted, threw open his
vest and calmly said, ‘‘I fear God and honor
the king.’”” ‘‘ The rioters resolved to pull down
the preaching house, and set to their work,” he

writes, ‘‘ while we were preaching and praising
65
MAKERS OF METHODISM

God. It was a glorious time with us. Every
word and exhortation sunk deep, every prayer
was sealed. The rabble raged all night, and by
morning had pulled down one end of the house,
and soon not a stone remained upon another.”

Next morning he was preaching as usual at
five o’clock. The rioters smashed in the win-
dows of his dwelling and threatened to tear it
down, but the preacher fell asleep in five min-
utes in the dismantled room. ‘‘I feared no
cold,” he writes, ‘‘but dropped to sleep with
that word, ‘Scatter Thou the people that delight
in war.’”’

Charles Wesley, though constitutionally a
timid man, was bold as a lion in the discharge
of duty, and shared with unflinching courage
the persecutions of the Methodist preachers.
Having met with an accident in Bristol, he was
unable fora time to walk. He was, however,
carried about from place to place, preaching
daily on his knees. ‘‘ The word of God,” he
wrote, ‘(is not bound, if I am, but runs very
swiftly.” At St. Ives, in Cornwall, the chapel
was utterly demolished, and the worshipers were
beaten and trampled on without mercy. At
length ‘the ruffians fell to quarreling among
themselves, broke the head of the town clerk,
and drove one another out of the room.” Often

the clergy and wardens of the Established
66
JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

Church headed the rabble. At Poole ‘the
church record bears to this day an entry of ex-
penses at the village inn for drinks to the mob
and its leader for driving out the Methodists.”
Yet nowhere were more glorious triumphs won
for Methodism than in this county of Cornwall.
Its bitterest persecutors became its most stalwart
defenders.

At Wednesbury John Wesley was attacked at
night in a pelting storm by an overwhelming
mob of colliers and others. ‘‘ A strong man
aimed several blows with an oak bludgeon at
the back of hishead. One of them would proba-
bly have been fatal, but they were all turned
aside, Wesley says, he knows not how. He was
struck by a powerful blow on the chest, and by
another on the mouth, making the blood gush
out; but he felt no pain, he affirms, from either
more than if they had touched him with a straw.
The noise on every side, he adds, was like the
roaring of the sea. Many cried: ‘Knock his
brains out! Down with him! Kill him at once!
Crucify him!’ ‘No; let us hear him first,’
shouted others. He at last broke out aloud into
prayer. The ruffian who had headed the mob,
a bear garden prizefighter, was struck with awe,
and turning to him, said: ‘Sir, I will spend my
life for you; follow me, and not one soul here

shall touch a hair of your head.’”
67
MAKERS OF METHODISM

The houses of the Methodists were attacked,
the windows broken, the furniture demolished.
His brother Charles writes of John Wesley:

 

JOHN WESLEY AT 40.

‘« He looked like a soldier of Christ. His clothes
were torn to tatters.’” Yet the timid, fastidious,
scholarly poet of Methodism also went like a
soldier into the imminent deadly breach, and

preached from the text, ‘‘ Watch ye, stand fast
68
JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

in the faith, quit you like men, be strong;” and
again, at daylight, from the text, ‘‘ Fear none
of these things which thou shalt suffer.”

On the outbreak of the Stuart rebellion of
1745 the most absurd calumnies were reported
concerning John Wesley. ‘‘He was an agent
of the pretender; he had been arrested for high
treason; he was a Jesuit in disguise; he was a
Spanish spy; he was an Anabaptist, a Quaker;
had been prosecuted for unlawfully selling gin;
had hanged himself; and, at any rate, was not
the genuine John Wesley, for it was well known
that the latter was dead and buried.”

Charles Wesley was actually indicted before
the magistrate because he had besought God to
call home his banished ones. This, it was
insisted, meant the House of Stuart.

Bishop Lavington threatened to strip the
gown off one of Wesley’s preachers for his
Methodistic practices. Stripping it off himself he
cast it at the bishop’s feet, saying, ‘‘ 1 can preach
the Gospel without a gown.” Lavington was
charmed by his manly independence and agreed
to overlook his Methodist fervor.

In Wednesbury the mob ruled for a week.
The houses of the Methodists were pillaged and
plundered as in a sack of a foreign town. Yet
would the persecuted Methodists not surrender

their religious convictions.
69
MAKERS OF METHODISM

The whole region was in a state little short of
civil war. The London newspapers reported
that these outrages were perpetrated by the
Methodists themselves. The magistrates took
part with the mob against the preachers. One
of them offered five pounds to have the Metho-
dists driven from town. Another shouted,
‘““Huzza! boys; well done! stand up for the
Church.” At Thorpe one of the persecutors
died in despair, and the rabble was appalled
into quiet. At Newcastle Wesley proclaimed
in the public square, ‘‘ Ye shall be hated of all
men for my name’s sake.” Beneath his burning
words the ringleaders were melted into contri-
tion. Yet so mightily grew the word of God
and prevailed that Wesley’s journeys soon be-
came like a royal progress. The people who had
mobbed him crowded the streets to bless him as
he passed.

At Roughlee, a place rightly named, a mob
thought to exact a pledge from Wesley that he
would no more visit the neighborhood. He de-
clared that he would cut off his right hand
sooner. He was knocked down and trampled
upon, but next day he preached, he writes, as
he never did in his life before. At Devizes the
mob brought a fire engine, flooded the rooms in
which Wesley lodged, and demanded that he

should be given up to them to be thrown into a
70
JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

horse pond. The wife of the mayor sent her
maid to entreat him to escape disguised as a
woman. He declined this doubtful method.
More than a thousand men joined in the assault.
‘‘Such threatenings, curses, blasphemies,”’
writes Wesley, ‘‘I have never heard.”

The persecuted Methodists knelt down in
prayer to await the assault. A lot of ruffians
were over their heads removing the tiles from
the roof. A constable appeared, and demanded
a pledge that the preachers should return no
more. This was refused, when they were con-
ducted out of the town and went on their way
rejoicing. Amid these tumultuous scenes John
Wesley declares that ‘‘ ten thousand cares were
of no more inconvenience to him than so many
hairs on his head.” His countenance, as well
as conversation, expressed an habitual gayety of
heart.

During all these years of toil and persecution
John Wesley maintained his connection with
Oxford University as one of the Fellows of Lin-
coln College. Indeed, the thirty pounds a year
which he derived from his fellowship was his
only fixed income. One of the duties arising
from this relationship was that of preaching in
his turn before the university, even after his
name was cast out as evil and everywhere

spoken against. It was in the pulpit of the
71
MAKERS OF METHODISM

venerable Christ Church, from which Wyclif,
the Morning Star of the Reformation, and the
martyr bishops, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer,
had preached, that he in turn proclaimed the
word of life. The last time that he preached
before the university was an occasion of special
interest. It is thus described by Dr. Stevens:

‘“‘Oxford was crowded with strangers, and
Wesley's notoriety as a field preacher excited a
general interest to hear him. Such was the
state of morals at the time, that clergymen,
gownsmen, and learned professors shared with
sportsmen and the rabble the dissipations of the
turf. Charles Wesley went in the morning to
the prayers at Christ Church, and found men in
surplices talking, laughing, and pointing as ina
playhouse during the whole service. The inn
where he lodged was filled with gownsmen and
gentry from the races. He could not restrain
his zeal, but preached toa crowd of them in the
inn courtyard. They were struck with aston-
ishment, but did not molest him. Thence he
went to St. Mary’s Church to support his brother
in his last appeal to their a/ma mater. Wesley’s
discourse was heard with profound attention.
The assembly was large, being much increased
by the races.

“«« Never,” says Charles Wesley, ‘have I seen

a more attentive congregation. They did not
72
 

INTERIOR OF ST, MARY’S CHURCH, OXFORD.
MAKERS OF METHODISM

let a word slipthem. Some of the heads of col-
leges stood up the whole time, and fixed their
eyes on him. If they can endure sound doc-
trine like his he will surely leave a blessing
behind him. The vice chancellor sent after
him and desired his notes, which he sealed up
and sent immediately. We walked back in
form, the little band of us four, for of the rest
durst none join us.’

‘‘In his journal of that day John Wesley says:
‘I preached, I suppose, the last time at St.
Mary’s! Beitso. Jam now clear of the blood
of those men. I have fully delivered my own
soul.’ Such was the treatment he received from
the university, to which he has given more his-
torical importance than any other graduate of
his own or subsequent times, and more, perhaps,
than any other one ever will give it.”

The Wesley brothers had hitherto been too
busy in the service of God, and too unsettled in
their mode of life, to marry. At length, in his
forty-first year, Charles Wesley married the
daughter of a Welsh squire, a lady of culture,
refinement, and piety. John Wesley enter-
tained a sincere affection for a pious Methodist
matron, Mrs. Grace Murray. She, however, be-
came the wife of one of his lay helpers, and
Wesley, in his forty-ninth year, married a Mrs.
Vizelle, a widow lady of wealth and intelligence,

74
JOUN AND CHARLES WESLEY

but of intolerably jealous disposition. Her am-
ple property was secured to herself, and she was

 

 

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RADCLIFFE LIBRARY, OXFORD.

made to understand that the great evangelist
was not to abate a jot of his constant labor and
travel. She soon grew tired of his wandering

life. For twenty years she persecuted him
75
MAKERS OF METHODISM

with unfounded suspicions and intolerable an-
noyances. His letters were full of patience and
tenderness. When she finally left him, with
the assurance that she wouid never return, he
wrote in his journal, ‘‘Non cam religuit, non ad1-
misst, non revocabo’’—(I did not forsake her, I did
not dismiss her, I will not recall her).

John Wesley made many visits to Ireland,
and showed much sympathy toward the warm-
hearted and impulsive Irish people. Sometimes
he was bitterly persecuted by a Roman Catholic
mob, but often he was astonished at their cor-
diality and good will. He describes them as
an immeasurably loving people.

Thomas Coke visited the Green Isle still
more frequently, and toiled without stint in
preaching the Gospel. Thomas Walsh was
brought up a zealous Roman Catholic, but be-
came a no less zealous Methodist. He had an
extraordinary facility for acquiring languages,
and mastered, besides his native Irish tongue,
English, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He rose
at four in the morning, studied till late at night,
laboring arduously during the day. He spent
much time reading his Greek and Hebrew Scrip-
tures on his knees; and was so familiar with
the latter that he could quote any chapter or
verse.

But it was not all plain sailing in Ireland. In
76
JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

Cork a drunken mob ranged the streets shout-
ing, ‘‘ Five pounds for the head of the Swad-
dler.””. What was worse, a jury made the fol-
lowing presentment: ‘‘ We find and present
Charles Wesley to be a person of ill fame, a
vagabond, and a common disturber of his ma-
jesty’s peace, and we pray that he may be trans-
ported.”

In 1744 John Wesley invited a number of his
ministers and lay assistants to a council in the
old Foundry at London in June. There were
present four ordained ministers of the Church
of England, who had cast in their lot with the
Wesleys in their toils and persecutions, and four
lay helpers. These faithful men remained to-
gether for five days, discussing questions of re-
ligious doctrine and polity. They avoided all
unnecessary dogmatics, ‘‘confining their in-
structions to those vital truths which pertain to
personal religion, as repentance, faith, justifica-
tion, sanctification, the witness of the Spirit.”
Thus was held the first Methodist Conference,
the type of many thousands which have since
been held in the two hemispheres. Even then
Methodism began to look forward to the crea-
tion of a seminary for the training of its minis-
ters, nor did it rest till this became an accom-
plished fact.

So great was the growth of the London socie-
6 77
MAKERS OF METHODISM

ties that Mr. Wesley made an appeal for sub-
scriptions to the amount of £6,000 for the pro-

 

CITY ROAD CHAPEL, LONDON.

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posed ‘‘new chapel.” At length the City Road
Chapel was built near the Foundry, in what was

then open fields, but is now a wilderness of
78
JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

brick and stone. This is the best known of all
the Wesleyan chapels. It isa large, plain, and
nearly square structure, without much attempt
at architectural display. In the interior, on the
walls all around, are numerous marble tablets in
memory of the distinguished preachers who have
ministered within its walls—John and Charles
Wesley, Fletcher, Benson, Coke, Clarke, Wat-
son, Bunting, Newton, Punshon, Gervase Smith,
and many others. American and Canadian
Methodisms are represented by marble columns
in the restored structure. In the graveyard
rest the remains of the founder of Methodism,
of Adam Clarke, Joseph Benson, Jabez Bunting,
and of many another whose life and labors were
devoted to the glory of God in the service of
Methodism.

In Bunhill Fields burying ground, just oppo-
site, lies the dust of Susanna Wesley; also of
the glorious dreamer, John Bunyan; of Isaac
Watts, the sweet singer; and of Daniel Defoe,
author of Robinson Crusoe. ‘These three are
probably the best known writers of the English
tongue.

‘« City Road Chapel burying ground,” said
John Wesley, ‘‘is as holy as any in England.”
Aye, truly. From all parts of Christendom
come pilgrims to visit that sacred spot. Beside

the tomb of John Wesley grows an elder tree,
79
MAKERS OF METHODISM

clippings from which have been transplanted to
almost every part of the world—an emblem of
the Church which he planted, which has taken
root and brought forth its blessed fruit in every
clime.

In this venerable mother church of Meth-
odism for many years service was held, as at the
Foundry, at five o’clock in the morning, and we
have records of large gatherings assembling on
Christmas Day at four o’clock, and again at ten.

In connection with City Road Chapel was the
preacher’s house, a very plain brick building.
In a small room of this, used as a bedroom and
study, John Wesley died. For over a hundred
years it has been occupied by his successors,
and the same plain and simple furniture—
chair, table, and desk—that he used, are still
to be seen. It has now been set apart as a
Wesleyan museum and as a home for Christian
workers.

It seems to bring one nearer to the springs
of Methodism to stand in the old pulpit in
which its early fathers preached; to sit in
Wesley’s chair; to see the room in which he
died; the study, a very small room, in which
he wrote many of his books; the very time-
worn desk at which he sat; and then to stand
by the grave in which he is buried. In the

old parsonage is shown the teapot, of generous
80
JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

dimensions, from which Wesley used to regale
the London preachers every Sunday. On one
side is the verse beginning ‘‘Be present at our
table, Lord,’’ and on the other the words, ‘‘ We
thank thee, Lord, for this our food,” etc.

Up to his sixty-ninth year John Wesley kept
up his round of travel, amounting to five thou-
sand miles a year, on horseback. After this
his friends provided him with a carriage. ‘‘He
paid more tolls,” says Southey, ‘‘ than any other
man in England.” The grand old man ascribed
his health and strength to his out-of-door life,
to his constant rising at four o’clock, to the fact
that he never lost a night’s sleep in his life, to
his constant preaching, particularly at five
o'clock in the morning, for fifty years, and, last,
to his contentment of mind. ‘‘ By the grace of
God,” he says, ‘‘1 fret at nothing.”

It is truly amazing that so venerable a man
could be heard by so many persons out of
doors. At Gwennap Pit, a great natural am-
phitheater, two hundred and forty feet in
diameter, he was heard distinctly by over
thirty thousand persons. At Moorfields, once
the scene of reckless riot, there were thousands
upon thousands, ‘‘and all was as still as night.”
In towns where once no Methodist could show
his head he was welcomed to the pulpits of the

Established Church. The allurements of rest
81
MAKERS OF METHODISM

and leisure could not detain his earnest soul.
In his seventy-sixth year he writes: ‘‘I rested
at Newcastle; lovely place, lovely company!
but I believe there is another world. There-
fore I must arise and go hence.” And the next
day he was away, preaching twice before the
sun went down.

He visited with diligence from house to
house in the most noisome purlieus of East
London. Hehad not found any such distress,
not even in Newgate Prison. On his eightieth
birthday he writes, ‘‘ Blessed be God, my time
is not labor and sorrow.” He felt no more pain
or infirmity than at twenty-one. On his eighty-
third birthday he repeats, ‘‘It is eleven years
since I felt such a thing as weariness.’’ His
hale and hearty old age was full of keen appre-
ciation of nature and of the eager study of books,
including the Italian classics and current litera-
ture. In commenting upon the picturesque
scenery of his travels he reflects, ‘‘ Never-
theless the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor ever shall be till it see the King in his
beauty.”

When over eighty he made two journeys to
Holland, preaching at The Hague, Utrecht,
Amsterdam, and Rotterdam, and greatly en-
joying the historic and patriotic associations of

these cities. He knew everyone best worth
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JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

knowing in the United Kingdom. At Lincoln
he called on his old friend, Dr. Samuel Johnson,
who highly appreciated his visit, and regretted
only Wesley's economy of time. ‘He talks
well on any subject,” said the great moralist.
‘*T could converse with him all night.”

John Howard, the great philanthropist, be-
fore leaving England on his last ‘‘ circumnavi-
gation of charity,” called at City Road to
present Wesley with a copy of his latest quarto
on prisons. With Wilberforce, the philanthro-
pist, John Wesley was in keenest sympathy, and
to him he wrote his last letter, in which he
designates the African slave trade as ‘‘ that exe-
crable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of
England, and of human nature.”

The genial old man was ever a lover of chil-
dren. At Oldham he found ‘‘a whole street
lined with them—a troop of boys and girls who
closed him in, and would not let him go until he
had shaken each of them by the hand.” In his
eighty-eighth year he preached a special ser-
mon to children in words of not more than two
syllables. His appearance in extreme old age
is described as a pattern of neatness and sim-
plicity, his hair as white as snow, and his smile
one of peculiar benignity.

Feeling that he must soon lay down his work

he framed, in 1784, the Deed of Declaration,
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MAKERS OF METHODISM

whereby a hundred of his preachers were con-
stituted the Legal Conference after his death.
In their name were held all the chapels and par-
sonages and other property of the Wesleyan Con-
nection. He also set apart Dr. Coke as super-
intendent or bishop of the American Methodist
Church, as elsewhere described.

In his eighty-fifth year the grand old man
acknowledges that he is not so agile as for-
merly, that he has occasional twinges of rheuma-
tism, and suffers slight dimness of sight, his
other senses remaining unimpaired. ‘‘ How-
ever, blessed be God,’’ he says, ‘‘I do not slack
from my labor, and can preach and write still.”
From being one of the worst hated he became
one of the best beloved men in the kingdom.
At Cork, where he was once mobbed and burned
in effigy, he was met by a cortége of mounted
horsemen. At Falmouth, where he had been
taken prisoner by an immense mob ‘roaring
like lions,” high and low now 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.”’ But most of them sobbed with broken
84
JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

hearts while he proclaimed, ‘‘ There is joy in
heaven over one sinner that repenteth.”

On his last birthday he writes that although
his strength had forsaken him so that he had to
be helped into the pulpit, and his eyes had be-
come dim, yet he felt no pain.

In 1790, for the last time, John Wesley pre-
sided at his Conference at Bristol, being then in
his eighty-eighth year. His response to the
salutations of the multitudes who gathered
around him as he passed was that of St. John
the Divine, ‘‘ Little children, love one another.”
He now ceased recording his receipts and ex-
penditures in his account book. His last entry
is a remarkable one: ‘‘ For upward of eighty-
six 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 Ican; that is, all I have.” It is
scarcely legible, and the error in the number of
years given shows the failure of his faculties.

When his income was but thirty pounds a
year he confined his expenses to twenty-eight
pounds and gaveaway two. When it reached one
hundred and twenty, which seems to have been
its largest amount, he still lived on his old
allowance and gave away ninety-two pounds.
Besides this he earned a large amount by his

numerous writings. This was generously em-
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MAKERS OF METHODISM

ployed in carrying on his great work. It is
estimated that he gave away over thirty thou-
sand 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. Toa
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. But, for the most part, he
endured persecution and buffeting with the
meekness of his Master, and when smitten on
one check he literally turned the other also.

Notwithstanding his extreme age, there
seemed no limit to his energy. After performing
along service of three hours, praying, preaching,
and administering the sacrament, he preached
again inthe openair. The next day he preached
twice in different towns, and in the evening to
a crowd in the chapel, and to a multitude with-
out, who could hear through the open win-
dows. And so on, day after day, preaching
twice or thrice daily, beginning at five o'clock in
the morning.

In his last letter to America he writes, with
a sense of the essential unity of Methodism the

wide world over, ‘‘ Lose no opportunity of de-
86
JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

claring to all men that the Methodists are one
people in all the world, and that it is their full
determination so to continue.”

On February 22, 1791, he preached his

 

WESLEY IN HIS OLD AGE.

last sermon in City Road Chapel, and the fol-
lowing day his last sermon on earth. ‘‘On
that day,”’ says Dr. Abel Stevens, ‘‘ fell from his

dying grasp a trumpet of the truth which had
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MAKERS OF METHODISM

sounded the everlasting Gospel oftener, and
more effectually, than that of any other man for
seventeen hundred years. Whitefield preached
eighteen thousand sermons, more than ten a
week for his thirty-four years of ministerial life.
Wesley preached forty-two thousand four hun-
dred after his return from Georgia, more than
fifteen a week.”

The following Sunday he quoted with cheer-
fulness his brother’s hymn:
“ Till glad I lay this body down,
Thy servant, Lord, attend;

And, O, my life of mercy crown
With a triumphant end!”

and repeated over and over again the lines:

“1 the chief of sinners am,
But Jesus died for me.”

Two days later he sang with fervor:

“Tl praise my Maker while I've breath,

And when my voice is lost in death,
Praise shall employ my nobler powers;

My days of praise shall ne'er be past,

While life, and thought, and being last,
Or immortality endures.”

Twice he repeated the words, ‘‘ The best of all
is, God is with us;”’ and with the words, ‘‘ Fare-
well! farewell!” upon his lips, his spirit passed
into the skies. In accordance with his will, six

poor men bore him to his grave in the rear of
88
JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

City Road Chapel. ‘‘He directed that there
should be no hearse, no coach, no escutcheon,
no pomp, except the tears of those who loved
him, and were following him to heaven.” So
great was the multitude that thronged to pay a
last tribute of love that it was deemed best to
bury him before six in the morning. Neverthe-
less, a great multitude were present, and their
tears and sobs attested the depths of their affec-
tion.

It has been well said ‘‘that few men could
have endured to travel so much as he did, with-
out either preaching, writing, or reading; that
few could have endured to preach as often as he
did, supposing they had neither traveled nor
written books; and that very few men could
have written and published so many books as
he did, though they had always avoided both
preaching and traveling.”

Charles Wesley, the poet of Methodism, was
almost as great a marvel as his venerable
brother. Up to his eightieth year he main-
tained his vigor of body and mind. His last
hymn, dictated to his wife on his deathbed,
was the sweet, sad note of the dying swan about
to set sail on a sea of glory:

“ In age and feebleness extreme,
Who shall a sinful worm redeem ?
Jesus, my only hope thou art,

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MAKERS OF METHODISM

Strength of my failing flesh and heart :
O could I catch one smile from thee,
And drop into eternity!”

He was, for the volume and excellence of his
verse, the greatest hymnist the world has ever
seen. He composed his immortal songs chiefly
on horseback as he rode ‘‘ from town to town,
from mob to mob,” writing them in pencil in
shorthand characters on a card. Often when he
came to his lodgings he would call out for pen
and ink, and complete the hymn while the in-
spiration was upon him,

Some of his finest lyrics were composed dur-
ing his travels at the time when the early
Methodists were daily assaulted, maltreated,
and persecuted. He often recited and some-
times sang them among the raging mobs. Four
of them were written ‘‘to be sung in a tumult,”’
and one was a ‘‘ prayer for the first martyr.” It
was soon to be found appropriate. Many others
were inspired by the triumphant deaths of these
holy confessors of the faith.

Over six hundred of his hymns have been
collected in the Wesleyan hymn book. About
forty-six hundred in all have been printed, but
about two thousand still remain in manuscript.
Many of these, by their spiritual exaltation and
poetic merit, have won their way into the hym-

naries of nearly all the Christian Churches.
go
JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

They have inspired the faith and voiced the feel-
ings of unnumbered millions, and have been
lisped by the pallid lips of the dying as, shout-

 

CHARLES WESLEY,

“THE SWEET SINGER OF METHODISM.””

ing their triumphant songs, they have ‘‘swept
through the gates” of the celestial city.

A great hymn is one of God's best gifts to
his Church. When the voice that first sang it

is silent forever the hymn will go singing
91
MAKERS OF METHODISM

through the ages in many lands and many
tongues. Every great revival has been largely
dependent on the help of sacred song. ‘The
doctrines of the Reformation in Germany flew
abroad on the wings of the hymns and carols of
Martin Luther. The Wesleyan revival found
its most potent ally in the immortal hymns of
Charles Wesley.

‘«To the sweet singer of Methodism,” says
Dr. W. F. Tillett, ‘‘ our Church owes more than
to any other man save his brother John. The
doctrines of early Methodism were not only
preached into the ears, but they were sung into
the minds and hearts of the people in and
through the matchless hymns of this seraphic
poet of the Church.”

‘‘Let me write the songs of a people,” said
one, ‘‘andI care not who may write their laws:
I will govern them.”” ‘‘ Let me write the hymns
of a church,” said another, ‘‘and I care not
who may write her creeds and her ponderous
volumes of theology: I will determine the faith
of the people.”

So these hymns of Charles Wesley have
molded the thought and life of Methodism be-
yond any other influence. ‘‘ His songs have
helped more souls to happiness, to holiness and
heaven than those of any other bard since the

days of the Psalmist of Israel.”
g2
JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

Much as his hymns are appreciated by Meth-
odists, some of the most glowing criticisms and
eulogies of his verse have come from other than
Methodist writers. ‘‘Christian experience,”
says James Montgomery, ‘‘ from the depths of
affection, through all gradations of doubt, fear,
desire, faith, hope, and expectation, to the
transports of perfect love in the very beams of
the beatific vision, furnishes him with everlast-
ing and inexhaustible themes, celebrated with
an affluence of diction and a splendor of color-
ing rarely surpassed.”

Henry Ward Beecher said: ‘‘ I would rather
have written that hymn of Wesley’s, ‘ Jesus,
Lover of my soul,’ than have the fame of all the
kings that ever sat on the earth. It is more
glorious. It has more power. I would rather
be the author of that hymn than hold the
wealth of the richest man in New York. He
willdie. He will pass after a little while out of
men’s thoughts. But that hymn will go on
singing until the last trump brings forth the
angel band; and then, I think, it will mount
up on some lip to the throne of God.” It is
the hymn probably more used than any other in
the English language.

Between his conversion and death Charles
Wesley wrote nearly seven thousand hymns,

filling thirteen octavo volumes of five hundred
7 93
MAKERS OF METHODISM

pages each; exceeding all the poetry of Watts,
Cowper, and Pope put together. He wrote on
an average nearly three hymns a week for fifty
years. And the number of his hymus is only
equaled by their range and variety, spanning
as they do the sublime empyrean from the first
cry of a newborn babe to the last shout of a
dying spirit. His memory will live immortal
in his immortal verse till time shall be no more.
To quote from the inscription on his tomb:
“Posterity shall hear and babes rehearse
The healing virtues of a Saviour’s name ;

Yes, babes unborn shall sing in Wesley’s verse,
And still reiterate the pleasing theme.”

He was the laureate of the affections, and
had a hymn for almost every event in life. At
the time of his marriage to Miss Sarah Gwynne,
they sang hymns of solemn joy composed by
himself for the occasion; and just after the cere-
mony he took his lovely young bride behind
him on horseback, and they sang other hymns
with pious joy as they rode thus along the way.
His married life was as full of happiness as his
brother John’s was of domestic misery.

Two of Charles Wesley’s sons became dis-
tinguished musicians. A great-grandson, a
venerable gentleman of silvery hair and ex-
quisite musical taste, is the organist of City

Road Chapel, London.
94
JOUN AND CHARLES WESLEY

It is fitting that in Westminster Abbey, that
‘*temple of silence and reconciliation,” that
mausoleum of England's mighty dead, there
should be a memorial of the two great men who
did so much to mold the higher life of the
nation. The beautiful mural monument of

 

WESLEY MEMORIAL TABLET, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

John and Charles Wesley, which is shown in
our cuts, is one of the first which Methodist
tourists from all parts of the world visit in the
venerable abbey. It was unveiled by Dean
Stanley on March 30, 1876, in the presence of a
large company of invited guests—ministers,
laymen, and ladies. ‘The company assembled
95
MAKERS OF METHODISM

first in the chapter-house, in which the first
English Parhament was held.

Dean Stanley, in unveiling the monument,
expressed the obligation which the Church of
England, which England itself, and which the
Church of Christ owed to the labors of John and
Charles Wesley.

Immediately beneath the sculptured picture
of the scene in the churchyard is John Wesley’s
great philanthropic declaration :

‘©T LOOK UPON ALL THE WORLD AS MY PARISH.”

And under this, on the sloping line at the bot-
tom, is graven Charles Wesley’s exultant ex-
clamation :

“(OD BURIES HIS WORKMAN, BUT CARRIES ON
His Work.”

Dr. Daniels eloquently remarks: ‘‘It is but
just that some memorial of that royal man
should be set up among the tombs of England's
princes, bishops, heroes, and statesmen. Other
men have been kings by the accident of birth,
of royal blood: John Wesley reigned by virtue
of the divine anointing. Other bishops have
worn the miter and carried the keys through

the devious workings of State Church prefer-
96
JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY

ment: John Wesley was a bishop by the grace
of God. Other heroes have earned their honors
by ravaging sea and land to kill, burn, and de-
stroy: Wesley, with equal courage and equal

 

WESLEY MEMORIAL TABLET, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

skill, achieved his fame not by killing, but by
saving men.”
97
MAKERS OF METHODISM

V

John Nelson, the Yorkshire Mason

“«T, JoHN NELSON, was born in the parish of
Birstal, in the West Riding of the County of
York, in October, 1707, and brought up a mason,
as was my father before me.” Thus begins
one of the most remarkable books in the lan-
guage. In simple, homely Saxon words the
author tells the story of his life. We get in
his pages a vivid picture of England a hun-
dred and fifty years ago—of its spiritual desti-
tution, and of the great Wesleyan revival that
swept over it, and gave it a grand moral im-
pulse, which is felt throughout the world.

John Nelson’s life was one of holy zeal and
grandest heroism. Like many a man through
whom God has blessed the world, he was made
to pass through intense religious experience,
doubtless that he might better counsel and com-
fort those who were in spiritual distress. We
shall tell the story as much as possible in his
own words. While yet a boy he was ‘“‘ horribly
terrified with the thoughts of death and judg-
ment.” Astheawfulimagery of the Apocalypse

was presented to his mind the word came with
98
JOHN NELSON, THE YORKSHIRE MASON

such power that he ‘fell with his face on the
floor, and wept till the place was as wet where
he lay as if water had been poured thereon.”
Still, he had no saving acquaintance with the
truth till after his marriage and settlement in
life. But all the while his heart cried out for the
living God. The hand of God was heavy upon
him, and often forty times a day he prayed for
pardon. His fellow-workmen persecuted him
because he would not drink with them, till he
fought with several of them; then they let him
alone. He wandered from one part of the king-
dom to another, seeking rest and finding none.

In his thirtieth year he writes: ‘‘O that I had
been a horse or a sheep! Rather than live
thirty years more as I have I would choose
strangling. O that I had never been born!”
An awful sense of the reality of the unseen
world and of the impending terrors of the judg-
ment day weighed like an intolerable load upon
him. He went from church to church—to St.
Paul's, to the Dissenters, the Quakers, the Ro-
man Catholics, to ‘‘all but the Jews’’—to try to
save his soul. Still the burden of conscious
guilt wasunremoved. He realized in all its bit-
terness that ‘‘ by the deeds of the law there shall
no flesh be justified.”

A score of times he stood amid the surging,

grimy throng that gathered around Whitefield
99
MAKERS OF METHODISM

as he preached on Moorfields; but though he
loved the man and was ready to fight for him,
he found no peace from hearing him. ‘‘ The
pains of hell gat hold upon him.” Sleep de-
parted from his eyes, and when he fell into
slumber he dreamed that he was engaged in
mortal combat with Satan, and awoke convulsed
with horror and affright.

At last John Wesley preached at Moorfields.
When he spoke he made the heart of Nelson
beat ‘‘like the pendulum of a clock.” Convic-
tion deepened. His friends would have knocked
Mr. Wesley’s brains out, for he would be the
ruin, they said, of many families if he were al-
lowed to live and go onas he did. For weeks
Nelson wrestled with God in agony of soul. At
last he vowed that he would neither eat nor
drink till he found forgiveness. He prayed till
he could pray no more. He got up and walked
to and fro, and prayed again, the tears falling
from his eyes like great drops of rain. A third
time he fell upon his knees, but ‘‘ was as dumb
asa beast beforeGod.” At length, in an agony,
he cried out, ‘‘ Lord, thy will be done; damn or
save.” That moment was Jesus Christ evidently
set before him as crucified for his sins. His heart
at once was set at liberty, and he began to sing,
‘©O Lord, I will praise thee; though thou wast

angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and
100
JOHN NELSON, THE YORKSHIRE MASON

thou comfortest me.’ Through such spiritual
travail was this valiant soul born into the king-
dom of God.

That night he was driven from his lodgings
‘on account of his much praying and ado about
religion. But as he was leaving the house con-
viction seized his hosts, and they were both, man
and wife, soon made partakers of the same grace.

Nelson was ordered to oversee some work on
the following Sunday. He declined and was
threatened with dismissal from his employment.

‘‘T would rather see my wife and children
beg their way barefoot to heaven,” he replied,
‘than ride in a coach to hell. I will run the
risk of wanting bread here rather than the haz-
ard of wanting water hereafter.’’ His master
swore that he was as mad as Whitefield; that
Wesley had made a fool of him. But instead of
being dismissed he was raised higher in his
master’s regard, nor were any men set to work
on the Sunday.

In all this time he had never spoken to Mr.
Wesley, nor conversed with any experienced
person about religion. He longed to find some
one to talk with; but, he pathetically says, he
sought in vain, for he could find none. Never-
theless, he was taught of God, and had sweet
fellowship with him in almost constant prayer

and in the study of his Holy Word.
Jol
MAKERS OF METHODISM

Such a desire for the salvation of souls now
possessed him that he hired one of his fellow-
workmen to hear Mr. Wesley preach, which led
to his conversion and that of his wife.

But Nelson was permitted to be sorely buffeted
by Satan; grievous temptations assailed his
soul. God’s hand, too, was laid heavily upon
him. An accumulation of calamities, almost like
the afflictions of Job, overtook him. A single let-
ter informed him that his almost idolized daugh-
ter was dead, that his son’s life was despaired
of, that his wife had fallen from a horse and
was lamed, that his father-in-law was dead, and
his mother sick. But, like Job, he exclaimed,
‘“«Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.”

He set out on his eventful journey to York-
shire, but he ‘‘had no more thought of preach-
ing than of eating fire.” His friends were as-
tonished at the story of his conversion. They
said they had never heard of such a thing in
their lives. His mother said his head was
turned. ‘‘Yes,” he replied, ‘‘and I thank God
my heart also.” His neighbors upbraided and
mocked him. His wife refused to live with him;
but by his faith and love he brought her toa
knowledge of the Saviour.

He forthwith began exhorting his neighbors
to flee from the wrath to come. Like Andrew,

he first brought his own brother to Jesus, and in
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JOHN NELSON, THE YORKSHIRE MASON

a few days six of his neighbors also. There
was a spiritual famine in the land, and he had
found the bread of life. He could not, there-
fore, but cry aloud to those who were perishing
of soul hunger. Soon his aged mother, another
brother, and most of his kindred were brought
to God; and for several weeks, six or seven per-
sons every week were converted through his ex-
hortations.

He was urged to preach, but he exclaimed,
‘Lord, thou knowest I had rather be hanged
on that tree than go to preach;” and, Jonah-
like, he fled from the call of God. A great con-
gregation was gathered in the fields and begged
him to preach. He fell flat on his face and lay
an hour on the grass, tasting, he believed, the
cup of the lost. <‘‘ Let me die! let me die!” he
exclaimed, in bitterness of soul, shrinking from
the burden of this cross. But in his anguish
the Sun of righteousness shone upon him, and
he exclaimed, ‘‘ Lord, I am ready to go to hell
and preach to devils if thou requirest it!" That
night two men were converted under his burn- *
ing words, which he took as the seal of the call
of God to preach the Gospel; but in his mental
strait he would have given ten pounds, he said,
for an hour's conversation with Mr. Wesley.

Some of his more cautious friends now urged

him to wait a month till he knew more of his
103
MAKERS OF METHODISM

own heart. But the word of God was a fire in
his bones, and he replied, ‘‘I will if you can
persuade the devil to be still for a month from
going about like a roaring lion, seeking whom
he may devour.” Oftentimes when he preached
at night, after his day’s work, the people, hun-
gering for the bread of life, refused to go away,
waiting like beggars that wanted a morsel of
food.

Soon he began his ranging through the king-
dom, proclaiming the word of life. As he
entered Leeds he was warned, ‘‘If you preach
there you need not expect to come out again
alive, for there is a company of men that swear
they will kill you.”

‘‘All the men in the town cannot kill me,’
answered the dauntless soul, ‘‘ till I have done
my Father's work.”

At Manchester some one threwa stone which
cut him in the head, but as his audience saw
the blood running down his face they kept quiet
till he had done preaching. With a boldness
not less than Luther's on his way to the Diet of
Worms, the sturdy Yorkshireman, in spite of
the threat that he would be mobbed and killed
if he tried to preach in a schoolhouse that had
been offered at Grimsby, exclaimed, ‘‘ By the
grace of God I will preach if there were as many

devils in it as there are tiles on it.”
104

,
JOHN NELSON, THE YORKSHIRE MASON

Nelson’s most bitter opposition came from
dissolute clergymen of the Established Church.
In Derbyshire a drunken parson with a lot of
lead miners began to halloo and shout as if they
were hunting with a pack of hounds; but the
power of the truth so affected the rude miners
that they became the champions of the man
they came to persecute. Thus God put a bridle
in the mouths of howling mobs who came not
merely to mock, but to kill, and many of them
remained to pray.

Nelson was summoned by Mr. Wesley to
London. But he had worn out his clothes in
the cause of God, and had none fit to travel in
until some tradesmen, unsolicited, sent him
cloth for a suit. Unable to hire a horse he set
out on foot for London, preaching as he went.
The aristocratic gownsmen and embryo parsons
of Oxford vied in ruffianism with the rude miners
of Derbyshire. ‘‘Inever heard a soldier or sail-
or,’’ says Nelson, ‘‘swear worse than they did.”

On his way to Cornwall with a fellow-evan-
gelist they had but one horse between them, so
they rode by turns. Like the apostle Paul,
Nelson labored with his hands at his trade, that
he might not be burdensome to those to whom
he preached. Nevertheless he was sometimes
in want of bread, and, like his Master, had not
where to lay his head. At St. Ives he and Mr.

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MAKERS OF METHODISM

Wesley for some time slept every night on the
floor—the learned Oxford Fellow and the York-
shire mason side by side.

“Mr. Wesley,” writes Nelson, ‘‘had my
great coat fora pillow, and I had Burkitt's Notes
on the New Testament for mine. After being
here three weeks, one morning, about three
o'clock, Mr. Wesley turned over, saying,
‘Brother Nelson, let us be of good cheer. I
have one whole side yet, for the skin is off but
one side.” We usually preached on the com-
mons,’ he adds, ‘‘and it was but seldom any-
one asked us to eat or drink.”

One day, after preaching, Mr. Wesley stopped
his horse to pick the wayside berries, saying,
‘«Brother Nelson, we ought to be thankful that
there is plenty of blackberries; for this is the
best country I ever saw for getting a stomach,
but the worst I ever saw for getting food. . . . I
had thought of begging a crust of the woman
where I met the people at Morva,”’ he added,
‘but forgot it till I had got some distance from
the house.” By such unostentatious heroism
were the foundations of Methodism laid in Great
Britain by these apostolic laborers.

On Nelson’s return from Yorkshire he found
his wife ill through maltreatment by a mob while
she was bravely defending a preacher whom they

were assaulting. ‘‘ You are Nelson’s wife, and
106
JOHN NELSON, THE YORKSHIRE MASON

here you shall die,’ swore the savages, and did
their best to fulfill their threat.

‘“‘In Leeds,” Nelson natively remarks, ‘‘ the
mob did not meddle with me, only some boys
threw about a peck of turnips at me.” At Not-
tingham a sergeant who came to assault him
publicly begged his pardon, and went away
weeping.

At Grimsby the church parson rallied a
drunken mob and smashed the windows and
furniture of the house where he lodged with
paving stones. A ringleader, after beating his
drum three quarters of an hour, began to listen,
and then to weep, and at last to pray. ‘‘So we
had great peace in our shattered house that
night,’ says Nelson, ‘‘and God’s presence
among us.”’

At length the drink-loving parsons and the
alehouse keepers—worthy allies !—resolved that
Nelson must be impressed into the army, as the
only way to stop his interference with their pleas-
ure or profits. Still he durst not keep silent, but
continued hewing stone all day and preaching
every night. ‘‘Iam not my own, but the Lord’s,”
he said; ‘‘ he that lays hands on me will burn his
own fingers.”

By a monstrous perversion of justice he was
arrested asa vagrant; 4500 bail was refused;

and the commissioners of the peace, among
107
MAKERS OF METHODISM

whom was the parson, impressed him asa soldier,
under the penalty of death if he refused. Still
his soul was kept in perfect peace, and he prayed
God to forgive them, for they knew not what
they did.

With other prisoners condemned for vagrancy
and theft Nelson was marched off to York, he
being singled out for special severity. At Brad-
ford he was lodged in a noisome dungeon, reek-
ing with filth, without even a stone to sit on, and
with only a little foul straw for a bed—a type of
too many of England’s prisons a hundred years
ago. But his soul was so filled with the love of
God that the felon’s cell was to him a paradise.
He realized that

«Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage.”

Some friends brought him meat and drink,
which they put through the small opening in
the door, and,

“Like Paul and Silas in the prison,
They sang the praise of Christ arisen.”

‘“‘T wished that my enemies,” wrote Nelson,
‘‘were as happy in their houses as I was in the
dungeon.”

At four o’clock in the morning his noble wife
visited his cell and said, although she then most

required a husband’s care, ‘‘ Be not concerned
108
JouN NELSON, THE YORKSHIRE Mason

about me and the children. He that feeds the
young ravens will be mindful of us;” and the
brave-souled husband answered, ‘‘I cannot fear
either man or devil so long as I find the love of
God as I do now.”

‘« Now, Nelson, where is thy God?” jeered a
woman, as the prisoners stood, like a gang of
slaves, for hours in the streets of Leeds. He re-
ferred her to Micah vii, 8-10: ‘‘ Rejoice not over
me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall rise.”

Large bail was offered for his release, but was
refused. ‘‘I am too notorious a criminal,” he
somewhat bitterly remarks, ‘‘to be allowed such
favors; for Christianity is a crime which the
world will never forgive.’”’ And this persecution
took place in Christian England little more than
a hundred years ago!

But he was not without consolation. ‘‘I find
the time has not yet come,” he says, ‘‘ for me to
be hated of all men for Christ’s sake.” At night
a hundred of his friends visited him in the
jail. They sang a hymn and prayed together,
and he exhorted them through the opening in
his cell door.

When he was brought before the military
officers he boldly reproved them for the sin of
swearing. ‘‘ You must not preach here,” he
was told; but he answered, ‘‘ There is but one

way to prevent it—that is, to swear no more in
109
\

MAKERS OF METHODISM

my hearing.” All York came forth to see him
led under guard through the streets, as if he
‘thad been one that had laid waste the nation ;”
but he passed through the city as if there had
been none in but God and himself.

He refused to take the King’s money. ‘‘I
cannot bow my knee to pray for a man and then
get up and kill him,” he said. Nevertheless, he
was girded with the weapons of war; but he
bore them asa cross, and would not defile his
conscience by using them. But if he was bound
the word of God was not bound; for if any blas-
phemed he ‘‘reproved them, whether rich or
poor.”

At the instigation of some clergymen he was
forbidden to preach under the penalty of being
severely flogged; but, Peterlike, he replied,
“Tt is better to obey God than man.” ‘I will
have no preaching nor praying in the regi-
ment,” swore the officer. ‘‘Then,” said Nel-
son, ‘You should have no swearing nor cursing
either.”” He was, however, carried off to prison ;
yet God enabled him to rest as well on the bare
boards, he declares, as if it had been on a bed
of down. ‘‘For what were you imprisoned?”
demanded the major. ‘‘ For warning people to
flee from the wrath to come,” said the intrepid
preacher; ‘‘and I shall do so again unless you
cut my tongue out.”

”

IIo
JouN NELSON, THE YORKSHIRE MASON

The London Methodists having hired a sub-
stitute to serve in his place, through the influ-
ence of the Wesleys and the Countess of Hunt-
ingdon with the Earl of Stair the discharge of
this resolute noncombatant was _ procured.
When he left the regiment several of his fellow-
soldiers wept and desired him to pray for them.

He was now free to indulge his hallowed pas-
sion—to preach the Gospel without hindrance.
For the most part the people heard him gladly;
yet in many places lewd fellows of the baser sort
assailed him with sticks, stones, and filth.
Once a halter was put around his neck to drag
him to the river to drown him. At Ackham, in
Yorkshire, he was knocked down eight times in
succession by a drunken mob led by some
‘‘young gentlemen.” He was dragged over the
stones by the hair of the head, kicked, beaten,
and trampled on, ‘‘to tread the Holy Spirit out
of him,’ as the murderous wretches blasphe-
mously declared. ‘‘ We cannot kill him,” they
said; ‘‘if a cat has nine lives he has nine score.”
“This,” says Nelson, ‘‘wason Easter Sunday’’—
a strange commemoration of the day.” They
swore they would serve Mr. Wesley the same
way. ‘‘ Then we shall be rid of the Metho-
dists forever,” they said; ‘‘ for none will dare to
come if they two be killed.” The next morn-

ing this Ajax of Methodism set out to meet Mr.
III
MAKERS OF METHODISM

Wesley, and ‘‘ was enabled to ride forty miles
that day.”

But these things were light afflictions; for
the Gospel had free course, and multitudes were
converted to God.

Here ends the remarkable journal of John
Nelson. For five-and-twenty years longer he
continued to range through the kingdom as one
of Mr. Wesley's regular helpers, a burning and
a shining light to all, a man full of faith and of
the Holy Ghost. He finished his course with
joy in the sixty-seventh year of his age, 1774.

We shall obtrude no comments of our own
upon the lesson of this noble life. No braver
soul ever went to the martyr’s stake, or won the
martyr’s starry and unwithering crown. He
and such as he, by their consecrated toils,
their suffering, and their undying zeal, laid the
foundations of that goodly structure of Meth-
odism that now rises fair throughout the land
they loved so well, and throughout the world.
Their memory is the imperishable heritage of
the Church universal. It shall be to all time,
and in all lands, a glorious example of valiant
living and holy dying, a rebuke to indolence or
self-seeking, and an inspiration to zeal and
energy in promoting the glory of God and the

salvation of souls.
112
Sitas TOLD, THE PRISONERS’ FRIEND

VI
Silas Told, the Prisoners’ Friend

THE life of Silas Told was one of extraordi-
nary vicissitudes. He has left the record of his
remarkable adventures written with a vividness
of detail that Defoe might have envied. He
was born in the ancient seaport of Bristol in the
year 1711. Both his father and his grandfather
were eminent physicians, and landed gentlemen ;
but through misfortune and ill-advised specula-
tion the family, on the father’s death, were
reduced almost to poverty. Silas received a
meager education at a charity hospital endowed
by a wealthy East India merchant. Here, even
in boyhood, he was the subject of deep convic-
tions of sin and of subsequent religious enjoy-
ment. While swimming with some _ school
companions he was nearly drowned, and with
difficulty was brought back to life, to pass
through tribulations which ‘‘ seemed like a sea
of blood and fire.”

In his fourteenth year he was apprenticed to
a West India sea captain. In the hard school
of the ship’s forecastle he received such barbar-

ous treatment that he thought he should have
113
MAKERS OF METHODISM

broken his heart with grief. But the orphan
cabin boy, alone in the wide world, had no friend
to whom he could apply for redress. On the
Spanish Main the crew were several weeks on
the short allowance of a single biscuit and half
a pint of foul water per day. At Kingston,
Jamaica, they were overtaken by a hurricane,
and of seventy-six sail in the harbor only one
escaped destruction.

For miles along the shore the drowned sea-
men were cast up by the waves and devoured by
the vultures. The poor lad was abandoned, ill
of fever, in the port of Kingston, without money
or friends, and lay down to die. Here he
‘‘pondered much upon Job’s case, considering
his own condition similar to his.” Rescued
from death by a London captain, he returned to
England and was soon shipped with a Guinea
slaver, bound for the coast of Africa and the
West Indies. A greater villain than his new
master, he writes, he firmly believed never ex-
isted. From the Negro savages he received
more kindness than from his own countrymen.
The appalling cruelties of that floating hell, a
slave ship, were never more vividly described.
Battened down under the hatches half the
human cargo were suffocated in a single night.
Driven to frenzy by outrage and wrong the
slaves rose in mutiny. ©Overpowered by their

LI4
SILAS TOLD, THE PRISONERS’ FRIEND

tyrants many plunged overboard and were
drowned. Cruelty and murder rioted unre-
strained. ‘‘ The mariners,” says Told, ‘‘ seemed
greedy of eternal death and damnation.” The
unhappy boy amid these vile companionships,
plunged recklessly into sin; yet, through the
mercy of God, his terrified conscience was never
without fear of death and the judgment.

The outrages and wrongs wreaked upon the
hapless slaves in Jamaica were too revolting to
be described. By an awful and inevitable retri-
bution such wickedness degraded masters as
well as slaves. In his many sojourns on the
island Told never met a single person having
the fear of God, or even the form of god-
liness.

With a sailorlike vein of superstition he tells
us that on the home voyage, the captain being
sick, a hideous devilfish followed the ship for
eighteen hundred miles, and on the captain’s
death disappeared and was seen no more.

During a later voyage the vessel in which
Told sailed was captured by Spanish pirates,
and the crew were informed that ‘‘ every one of
them should be hanged, and that without cere-
mony.” The prize, with its crew, made its
escape, however, but only to be wrecked upon a
rocky shore. The crew were rescued by a New

England vessel, but were again wrecked on
115
MAKERS OF METHODISM

Martha’s Vineyard. Reaching the mainland
they set out for Boston, but were arrested for
traveling on Sunday. In Boston, ‘‘a commodi-
ous and beautiful city,” Told remained four
months, and—marked contrast to Jamaica—
never heard an oath uttered, nor saw any Sab-
bath-breaking, nor found an individual guilty

of extortion. ‘‘ Would to God,” he exclaims,
‘that I could say this of the inhabitants of old
England!”’

After several other voyages, in one of which,
through stress of weather, the ship’s company
could dress no food nor change their wet cloth-
ing for six weeks, the whole crew were pressed
for the royal navy. The commander of the
ship to which Told was assigned, in striking
exception to many of his class of that age, was
a devout Christian, and used constantly to visit
the ship’s invalids and pray at their bed-
sides.

The story of Told’s short sailor courtship and
marriage is recorded in four lines. He now
joined the royal fleet of twenty-four ships of the
line, which soon sailed for Lisbon to protect the
Brazil fleet from the Spaniards. They lay at
anchor in the Tagus ten months and then re-
turned to Chatham, which movement occupied
another month. Those were the leisurely times

before the days of steam and telegraphy. Told
116
SILAS TOLD, THE PRISONERS’ FRIEND

was now paid off, and disgusted with the hard-
ships and wickedness of a life before the mast,
he never went to sea again.

‘‘Being now married, and desirous of living
a regular life,’’ as he says, ‘‘ he habituated him-
self to churchgoing;”’ but finding churchmen
living as others he hastily concluded that re-
ligion was a mere sham. He obtained the posi-
tion of a schoolmaster on the magnificent salary
of £14a year. The curate of the parish fre-
quently decoyed Told to his lodgings to join
him in smoking, drinking, and singing songs,
so that often his guest could scarcely find his
way home. As the sailor once quoted a text of
scripture the parson exclaimed, ‘‘ Told, are you
such a blockhead as to believe that stuff ? It is
nothing but a pack of lies.”” Such clerical influ-
ence and example certainly did not deepen his
conviction of the reality of religion.

He shortly after found employment with a
builder in London. One day a young brick-
layer asked him some questions on business.
Told answered him roughly, which treatment
the young man received with much meekness.
‘¢This,” said Told, ‘‘struck me with surprise.”
That young man, by his meek silence, had
preached an eloquent sermon which led to his
companion’s conversion, and through that to the

conversion of multitudes of others.
117
MAKERS OF METHODISM

His new acquaintance introduced him among
‘the people called Methodists.” Told tried to
stifle his convictions by cursing and swearing at
his friend who had been largely the cause of
them; but the young man bore it all with un-
wearied patience, without returning one evil
look or word. ‘‘ His countenance,” says Told,
‘‘appeared full of holy grief, which greatly con-
demned me.”

Told was at length induced to go .o early
Methodist service at ‘‘ The Foundry.” He found
it a ruinous old place which the government had
used for casting cannon. It had been abandoned,
and was much dilapidated. Above the smoke-
begrimed rafters was seen the tile roof covering.
A few rough deal boards were put together to
form a temporary pulpit. Such was the rude
cradle of that wondrous child of Providence
called Methodism.

Exactly at five o’clock a whisper ran through
the large congregation that had assembled,
‘Here he comes! Here he comes!” ‘Told ex-
pected to see some farmer's son, who, not able
to support himself, was making a penny in this
lowmanner. Instead of this he beheld a learned
clergyman of the Established Church arrayed in
gown and bands. The singing was much en-
joyed, but the extempore prayer savored rather

of Dissent for Told’s sturdy Churchmanship.
118
S1itas TOLD, THE PRISONERS’ FRIEND

Wesley’s text was, ‘‘ I write unto you, little chil-
dren, because your sins are forgiven you.”’ The
words sank into the heart of the long storm-
tossed sailor, weary with bearing its load of sor-
row and sin. With a characteristic, generous
impulse, he exclaimed, ‘‘ As long as I live I will
never leave this man.”

He soon met persecution. ‘‘ What, Told, are
you a Whitefielditer” jeered his boon compan-
ions. ‘‘ Assure as you are born, if you follow
them youare damned,” admonished these zealous
enemies of Methodism. His wife, also, although,
he says, ‘(a worthy, honest woman,” swore at
him and said: ‘‘ I hope you have not been among
the Methodists. Ill sacrifice my soul rather
than you shall go among those miscreants.”
Thus was the despised sect everywhere spoken
against. His firmness and affection, however,
overcatne her opposition.

Told was soon requested by Mr. Wesley to
undertake the teaching of the charity children
at the Foundry school, at the salary of ten shill-
ings a week. At this work he continued for
seven years, having the children under his care
from five in the morning till five in the evening,
both winter and summer. During this time he
educated two hundred and seventy-five boys,
‘“‘most of them fit for any trade.” Thus early

did Methodism grapple with the social problem
119
MAKERS OF METHODISM

of the education of the ignorant masses of the
population.

One morning, as Told and his scholars at-
tended the five o’clock sermon, Mr. Wesley
preached from the words, ‘‘I was sick and in
prison, and ye visited me not.”” The generous-
hearted sailor was conscience stricken at his neg-
lect of what was now revealed as a manifest duty,
and was ‘‘ filled with horror of mind beyond ex-
pression.” Learning that ten malefactors were
lying at Newgate under sentence of death, he
committed his school without an hour’s de-
lay to the care of an usher, and hastened to the
prison.

Silas Told had at length found his vocation.
For five and thirty years he continued to burrow
in the dungeons of London and the neighbor-
ing towns—often literally to burrow, for many
of them were underground—carrying the light
and liberty of the Gospel to their dark cells, and
to the still darker hearts of their inmates. The
unvarnished story of his experiences abounds in
incidents of the most thrilling, and often har-
rowing, interest.

He was often locked up with the felons all
night before their execution. He sat beside
them as they rode to the gallows in the death
cart with the halter on their necks, sharing with

them the jibes and jeers, and sometimes the mis-
120
StLas TOLD, THE PRISONERS’ FRIEND

siles, of the mob who gloated over their misery.
He prayed with them and exhorted and com-
forted them as they stood on the brink of
eternity. He begged or purchased their bodies
for burial, and often succored their wretched and
suffering families. He led many to repentance
and the forgiveness of sins.

Hardened criminals broke down under his
loving exhortations; and turnkeys, sheriffs, and
hangmen wept as they lstened to his prayers.
Friendless and degraded outcasts clung to him
for sympathy and counsel, and through the
manifestation of human love and pity caught a
glimpse of the infinite love and pity of Him who
died as a malefactor to save the malefactors.

Through his influence the felon’s cell became
to many the gate of heaven. The ribald oaths
and obscene riots of the British jails—then the
vilest in Europe, save those of the Inquisition—
often gave place to the singing of Christian
hymns and the voice of prayer and praise. At
one time Told had a Methodist society of thirty
members, and at another of thirty-six members,
among the poor debtors of Newgate. Yet was
he ‘‘very cautious of daubing them with un-
tempered mortar,” but sought to bring about
their real and permanent conversion.

The chief opposition to this Christlike work

came from the ‘‘ordinaries,” or chaplains,
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Makers OF METHODISM

whose hireling and heartless service was put to
shame by the intense and loving zeal of this
voluntary evangelist. But he burst through
every obstacle, and, ‘‘in the name of God, would
take no denial.”

The appalling condition of that prison world
with which he became so familiar makes one
recoil with horror. In many of the prisons
there was little or no classification of age or sex,
and hardened felons became the teachers in
crime of youthful offenders against cruelly un-
just laws. The extortion and rapacity and in-
humanity of jailers and turnkeys seem to us
almost incredible. The dungeons reeked with
squalor and wretchedness and filth. Honest
debtors were confined, sometimes for years, in
odious cells; and, as a favor, were permitted,
caged like wild beasts, to solicit the precarious
charity of passers-by. Men and women were
dragged on hurdles to Tyburn and hanged by
the score for forgery, for larceny, for petty
theft. Worst of all, Told cites certain instances
which demonstrate, by the subsequent discovery
of the real criminal, that sometimes innocent
persons had fallen victims to this sanguinary
code.

One young woman was thus judicially done
to death, although even the sheriff was con-
vincead of her innocence. A ribald mob clam-

122
SILAS TOLD, THE PRISONERS’ FRIEND

ored for her blood. Her religious resignation
was jibed at as hardness of heart, and so great
was the popular fury that Told, riding with her
to the gallows, was in imminent peril of assault.
Her innocence was afterward completely es-
tablished.

Told records the tragic circumstances of a
poor man who was hanged for stealing sixpence
to buy bread for his starving wife and babes.
Their parting in the prison was a harrowing
scene. Told collected from a poor Methodist
congregation a sum of money for the destitute
widow, and successfully overcame the official
brutality of the poorhouse guardians so as to
obtain for her parish relief.

On another occasion the multitude, when ex-
horted by Told to pray for the passing soul,
answered with a shout of execration and a
shower of stones that endangered the life of the
culprit before the law could do its work.
‘¢ Nothing could have equaled them,” says Told,
‘but the spirits let loose from the infernal
pit.” Yet allthis did not draw off the mind of
the dying woman from resting in that supreme
hour on the Lord Jesus.

Sometimes a rescue of the culprit was at-
tempted by his friends. A volley of stones
would assail the sheriff’s posse, and a rush would

be made toward the gallows. ‘Then the ghastly
123
MAKERS OF METHODISM

proceedings would be hurried through with the
most indecent dispatch and confusion.

Yet the frequency of this awful spectacle did
not diminish crime. On the contrary it flour-
ished, seemingly unrestrained, beneath the very
gallows. Familiarity with scenes of violence
created a recklessness of human life and pro-
pensity to bloodshed. Often the confederates
of the felon surrounded the gibbet and encour-
aged the partner of their guilt. Even the
sheriff's officers sometimes, by their crimes, in-
curred the penalty they assisted to inflict. We
may well rejoice that, through the ameliorating
influence of a revived Christianity on the penal
discipline and social life of Christendom, such
scenes of horror are now scarcely conceivable.

Sometimes the faithful warning and most
solemn adjuration of this hero-heart, burning
with such passionate zeal to ‘‘ pluck poor souls
out of the fire,” though he probed the guilty
conscience to the quick, failed to move men to
repentance, even on the awful brink of perdition ;
but many, without doubt, found, through tem-
poral death, eternal life.

Sometimes Told had the great joy of convey-
ing a reprieve to the condemned. After a con-
vivial election dinner three young sprigs of
nobility, half crazed with drink, diverted them-

selves by playing highwaymen and robbing a
124
SILAS TOLD, THE PRISONERS’ FRIEND

farmer. One of them, an officer on one of the
king’s ships, was betrothed to Lady Betty
Hamilton, the daughter of an ancient ducal
house. The lady importuned the king upon
her knees for the life of herlover. ‘‘ Madame,”
said his majesty, ‘‘ there is no end to your im-
portunity. I will spare his life upon condition
that he be not acquainted therewith till he ar-
rives at the place of execution.’”” The con-
demned man fainted with joy when the reprieve
was communicated to him; ‘* but when I saw
him put into a coach,” says Told, ‘‘ and per-
ceived that Lady Betty Hamilton was seated
therein, in order to receive him, my fear was at
an end.”

Many were the checkered scenes in which
this humble hero bore a prominent part. He
was not only a remarkable trophy of divine
grace, but an example of the power of Meth-
odism to use lowly and unlettered men in evan-
gelistic and philanthropic work.

What was the inspiration of this unwearying
zeal? It was the entire consecration of an
earnest soul to the service of its divine Master.
At atime when Told rose daily at four o’clock,
attended morning service at five, and toiled
every spare hour for the prisoner and the
outcast, he was agonizing in spirit over the re-

mains of the carnal mind. Like the Psalmist,
9 125
MAKERS OF METHODISM

he even forgot to eat bread by reason of his sin.
Often he wandered in the fields till near mid-
night, ‘‘roaring for very disquietude of soul.”
If he might, he says, he would have chosen
“« strangling rather than life.”

At length deliverance came. The heavens
seemed visibly to open before him, and Jesus
stood stretching forth his bleeding palms in the
benediction of full salvation. Tears gushed
from the eyes of the impassioned suppliant, and
in ecstasy he exclaimed, ‘‘ Lord, it is enough!”’

Thus was he anointed to preach good tidings
to the prisoners, to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to them that were bound.
Like the Lord he loved he went about doing
good, till, with the weight of well-nigh seventy
years upon him, ‘‘he cheerfully resigned his

soul into the hands of his heavenly Father.”
126
GEORGE WHITEFIELD, THE GREAT EVANGELIST

VII

George Whitefield, the Great Evangelist

THE peculiar glory of Methodism is that
through its influence men of lowliest origin
and often of sinful lives have been transformed
into saints and apostles. But this is only a
repetition of the miracle of grace which made
Newton, the slave trader, the eloquent preacher ;
and John Bunyan, the swearing tinker, the most
widely read of all English writers.

The story of George Whitefield, one of the
mightiest preachers the world has ever seen, is
a striking illustration of the transforming grace
of God. He was born in Gloucester, England,
in 1714, the son of an innkeeper. Two years
later his father died, and the poor, neglected boy
grew up in the evil atmosphere of the taproom,
amid the coarse surroundings and bad examples
of its lounging and drinking patrons.

When he was fifteen years old, he tells us, he
put on his blue apron, washed mops, cleaned
rooms, and became the common drawer in the
inn which his mother kept in the great port of
Bristol. He describes his youth as exceedingly

vicious. ‘‘If the Almighty had not prevented
127
MAKERS OF METHODISM

me by his grace,”’ he says, ‘‘I had now been
sitting in darkness under the shadow of death.”
It is probable, however, that his sensitive con-
science prompted these self-accusings in the sense
in which Paul and John Wesley each declared
himself to be the ‘‘ chief of sinners.”

The work of the Latin monk, Thomas a
Kempis, Zhe Imitation of Christ, fell into his
hands, and awakened in his soul the conviction
of sin. The boy had exhibited some natural
eloquence, and won some reputation by his
school declamations. He earnestly desired to
become a scholar. It was possible in those days
for a poor student to enter Oxford as a ‘‘serv-
itor,” providing for his expenses chiefly by
performing menial duties for his fellow-col-
legians. This young Whitefield resolved to do.
Thomas & Kempis had made a deep impression
upon his mind, but he had not yet apprehended
the doctrine of justification by faith. He en-
deavored to earn the pardon of his sins by
prayer and penance. He has left on record
that when sixteen years of age he began to fast
twice a week for thirty-six hours together. He
prayed many times a day, and received the
sacrament every ten days. He fasted himself
almost to death during the forty days of Lent,
and practiced private devotions seven times a

day. ‘‘ But,” headds, ‘‘I knew no more that I
128
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GEORGE WHITEFIELD,
MAKERS OF METHODISM

was to be born a new creature in Jesus Christ
than if I was never born at all.”

About this time he heard of the Methodists,
and procured at last an introduction to the Ox-
ford ‘Holy Club.” ‘ They built me up daily,”
he says, ‘‘in the knowledge and fear of God,
and taught me to endure hardness as a good
soldier of Jesus Christ.” He now began to
‘live by rule,” from which practice the Metho-
dists acquired theirname. He found this prac-
tice at first difficult, but at last delightful. He
engaged in the practice of visiting the poor and
neglected, the sick and the prisoners.

The state of morality at Oxford was very
low. A subtle infidelity prevailed, and even
the observance of religion was cold and formal.
‘““This zealous young soul passed through,”
says Dr. Stevens, ‘‘an ordeal of agonizing
self-conflicts. He selected the poorest food and
the meanest apparel, and by dirty shoes, patched
raiment, and coarse gloves endeavored to mor-
tify his burdened spirit.” The students threw
dirt at him in the street, and when he knelt
down to pray he felt such pressure of soul and
body that the sweat dripped from his face.

‘«God only knows,” he writes, ‘‘how many
nights I have lain upon my bed groaning under
what I felt. Whole days and nights have I

spent lying prostrate on the ground in silent or
130
GEORGE WHITEFIELD, THE GREAT EVANGELIST

vocal prayer.” During Lent, for the most part,
he ate nothing but coarse bread and sage tea.
He prayed under the trees at night, trembling
with the cold, till the college bell called him to
his room, where he often spent in tears and sup-
plications the hours which should have brought
him sleep. His health sank under these rigors.
But at last he was able to lay hold of the cross
by a living faith and the burden of his guilt
rolled forever away.

Shortly after this he was ordained by the
Bishop of Gloucester. ‘‘I can call heaven and
earth to witness,” he wrote, ‘‘that when the
bishop laid his hand upon me, I gave myself up
to be a martyr for Him who hung upon the cross
for me.

He now set forth on his flaming evangel,
“the John the Baptist of Methodism,” to pre-
pare the way in both hemispheres for the Wes-
leys and their fellow-helpers. He was without
a guinea in the world. The good bishop made
him a present of five sovereigns. His marvelous
eloquence was soon felt asa spell of power. At
his first sermon it was reported that fifteen of
his hearers had gone mad. The bishop only
wished that the madness might not pass away.
Whitefield was called to London to preach in
the grim old Tower, which had been the scene

of many a somber tragedy. He labored with
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MAKERS OF METHODISM

zeal among the soldiers in the barracks and
hospitals, preaching every week at Ludgate
Prison.

John Wesley, then in Georgia, invited him
to proceed thither. ‘‘ You ask me what you
shall have?” he said. ‘‘Food to eat, raiment
to put on, a house to lay your head in, such as
your Lord had not; and a crown of glory that
fadeth notaway.” Whitefield, therefore, started
to Bristol to sail for America, preaching where-
ever he had a chance. The churches were
thronged before dawn with people lighting their
way with lanterns to hear him. He understood
the language and the heart of the common peo-
ple, and they heard him gladly. He spoke
directly to their souls, which responded warmly
to his appeals.

On shipboard he preached with strange power
to the soldiers, sailors, emigrants—a wicked and
reckless class. In Georgia he labored zealously
among the Indians as well as among the white
people. His sympathies were deeply touched
on behalf of the many orphan children whom he
found. He felt a call from God to create an
asylum for their protection and training, and
returned to England full of this design. But
the Church established by law refused to permit
her most gifted son to preach from her pulpits.

With the Wesleys he soon began ‘‘ ranging the
132

 
GEORGE WHITEFIELD, THE GREAT EVANGELIST

kingdom,” preaching on moor and common, at
the village markets and at the crossroads.
Soon great multitudes, increasing to five, ten,
fifteen, and twenty thousand, listened to his soul-
stirring sermons. ‘‘ He could see the effect of
his words by the white gutters made by tears
which trickled down the blackened cheeks of the
miners, for they came unwashed out of the coal-
pits to hear him.”

John Wesley could scarcely reconcile himself
at first to this field of preaching. ‘‘ Till very
lately,” he writes, ‘‘ I was so tenacious of every
point relating to decency and order that I should
have thought the saving of souls almost a sin
if it had not been done in a church.” But
soon he, too, was preaching to the colliers
and plowmen and fishermen throughout the
kingdom.

At Moorfields and on Kennington Common
the clear, ringing voice of Whitefield could
be heard by vast multitudes who thronged
to hear the new prophet. ‘‘Scores of car-
riages, hundreds of horsemen, and thirty or
forty thousand on foot,” says Dr. Stevens,
“thronged around him. Their singing could
be heard two miles off, and his own voice a
mile. Wagons and scaffolds were hired to the
throng that they might the better hear and see

the wonderful preacher, who, consecrated and
133
MAKERS OF METHODISM

gowned as a clergyman of the national hier-
archy, had broken away from its rigid decorum
and, like his divine Master, had come out into
the highways and hedges to save their neglected
souls.”

The people contributed generously to his
orphan asylum. He records one collection of
which nearly one half consisted of nearly ten
thousand pieces of copper.

In 1739 Whitefield again visited America.
His eloquence aroused the good Quakers and
Presbyterians of Philadelphia to enthusiasm.
His favorite out-of-door pulpit was the balcony
of the old courthouse in Market Street. His voice
could be heard on the opposite shore of the
Delaware. From Savannah to Boston he ranged
through the country. Twenty thousand per-
sons gathered beneath the trees on Boston Com-
mon to hear him. At New Haven the Legislature
was in session. He preached before them with
wonderful power and pathos. ‘‘ Thanks be to
God,” said the aged governor of the province,
‘‘for such refreshment on our way to heaven.”
In seventy-five days he had preached one hundred
and seventy-five sermons, and stirred the con-
sciences of thousands from Maine to Georgia.

An unhappy alienation for a time now took
place between Whitefield and his old friends, the

Wesleys. Whitefield had adopted the Calvin-
134
GEORGE WHITEFIELD, THE GREAT EVANGELIST

istic doctrine of election. He felt himself to
have been so vile a sinner that he could not but
ascribe his own conversion to infinite and sov-
ereign grace which had elected him from all
eternity to everlasting life. But the estrange-
ment between such loving hearts could not long
continue. They were soon reconciled, and con-
tinued to labor in love and loyalty till their lives’
end.

Whitefield was frequently assaulted and mal-
treated. Yet his influence over a turbulent mob
was marvelous. During the Whitsuntide holi-
days, when drummers, trumpeters, merry-an-
drews, mastersof puppet shows, exhibitors of wild
beasts, and players were all busy in entertaining
their respective groups, he shouted his text,
‘Great is Diana of the Ephesians,” and boldly
charged home upon them the vice and peril of
their dissipations. Stones, dirt, rotten eggs,
and dead cats were thrown at him. ‘‘ My soul,”
he says, ‘‘ was among lions.” But before long
he prevailed, and the immense multitude were
turned into lambs. No less than a thousand
notes were afterward handed up to him for
prayers fromm persons who had been brought
‘‘under conviction” that day, and soon after
upward of three hundred were received into the
society at one time. Many of them were ‘‘ the

devil’s castaways,” as he called them. ‘‘ Num-
135
MAKERS OF METHODISM

bers that seemed to have been bred up for Ty-
burn were at that time plucked as brands from
the burning.”

In 1750, one morning at five o’clock, a great
earthquake shook the city of London. Wesley
was preaching in the Foundry at the time, and
cried out to the agitated people, ‘‘ Therefore
will we not fear, though the earth be removed,
and though the mountains be carried into the
midst of the sea; for the Lord of hosts is with
us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.” London
looked like a sacked city, with people flying in
coaches and on foot to escape the impending
peril. The earthquake shocks continued, and
Whitefield preached amid a midnight tempest in
Hyde Park to an awe-stricken multitude on the
more dreadful terrors of the dissolving world
and of the judgment day.

He continued year after year ranging through
the kingdom from Land’s End to Edinburgh and

Glasgow. ‘‘ Invitations,’ he wrote, ‘‘came from
every direction. I want more tongues, more
souls, more bodies for the Lord Jesus.” He

preached on one tour one hundred and eighty
sermons in three months to hundreds of thou-
sands of hearers. In Edinburgh in four weeks
he preached to nearly ten thousand hearers
every day. ‘‘O that I could fly from pole to

pole publishing the everlasting Gospel!” he
136
GEORGE WHITEFIELD, THE GREAT EVANGELIST

wrote. ‘‘I have scarce known sometimes
whether I was in heaven or on earth.”

In Dublin he was assailed by a Roman Cath-
olic mob. ‘‘ Stones flew about him from all direc-
tions,” writes Dr. Stevens, ‘‘and he reeled
under them until he was breathless and drip-
ping with blood. A few of his friends had fol-
lowed him, and now washed the blood from his
wounds; but as soon as he revived the family,
fearing their house would be demolished, en-
treated him to leave them. As it was perilous
for him to go out, a mechanic offered him his
wig and cloak as a disguise. He put them on;
but, ashamed of such apparent cowardice, threw
them off with disdain, determined to face the
populace in his proper habit. A Methodist
preacher brought a coach to the door. White-
field leaped in and rode unhurt, and with what
he calls ‘ Gospel triumph,’ through whole streets
of Roman Catholics, who threatened him at every
step of the way. None, he says, but those who
were spectators of the scene could form an idea
of the affection with which he was received by
the weeping, mourning, but now joyful, Meth.
odists.”’

Strange that so saintly a man should be thus
assailed. Yet play actors caricatured him on
the boards of the theater, letters threatening

his life were sent him, and more than once a
137
MAKERS OF METHODISM

ruffian came into the pulpit to attack him with
clinched fists.

Many were the dangers which this great
evangelist encountered by sea and land. Like
the apostle whom in his burning zeal he so
much resembled, he might refer to his journey-
ings often, his perils in the city and in the wil-
derness, to his weariness and painfulness, his
watchings, his fastings, and his manifold in-
firmities. In traversing the pathless American
forests he sometimes could hear the wolves
‘‘ howling like a kennel of hounds,”’ and had at
night to keep them at bay by blazing fires. He
had to ford icy rivers, and once was nearly
drowned in crossing the Potomac amid the
rigors of midwinter.

Seldom has such a burning soul been taber-
nacled in so fraila body. The latter portion of
his life was one long martyrdom of suffering.
Once after preaching he was so exhausted that
as he was laid upon a bed he heard the bystand-
ers say, ‘‘He is gone.” Again he writes: ‘I
was in all appearance a dying man, expecting
to be with my Maker before morning. I spoke
with peculiar energy. Such effects followed the
word I thought it worth dying a thousand
times.”

Yet his zeal burned the more intensely the

nearer he drew to the end of his labors. Four-
138
GEORGE WHITEFIELD, THE GREAT EVANGELIST

teen times he visited Scotland in the rude and
uncomfortable coaches of the period. During
the last of these visits we read that he preached
‘generally twice, sometimes thrice, a day, and
once five times.” When his health was at its
worst his short allowance of preaching was once
a day and thrice on Sunday. To get into the
pulpit seemed to put new life into his dying
frame. While thousands hung upon his words
he seemed to soar like a seraph to the gate of
heaven, and to speak as one who saw the secrets
veiled from mortal sight. Forty-two times he
crossed the Irish Channel to preach to the tur-
bulent yet generous-hearted Irish people.
Thirteen times he crossed the Atlantic in the
crowded and comfortless vessels of the time,
often consuming eleven weeks on the voyage.
Once his vessel lay a month in the Downs wait-
ing for a favorable wind. He had prayers and
preaching on shipboard every day. We read
of him after such a voyage lingering for three
weeks between life and death, but preaching
repeatedly, ‘‘though he had to be carried like
a child.” From Georgia to Maine he ranged
through the forest wilderness of America, preach-
ing in its scattered towns to eager multitudes. In
Great Britain, from the mountains of Wales to
the heathy moors of Scotland, in crowded cities

and on barren wolds, his persuasive voice was
139
MAKERS OF METHODISM

heard pleading with men to flee from the wrath
to come.

Often he preached beneath the gallows tree,
standing upon the coffin of the criminal who
was to be executed, and, ascending with him to
the scaffold, prayed with him to the last. At
five o’clock on a winter’s morning thousands
were drawn without the city to listen to the
story of Calvary from his lips. ‘‘I have seen,”
writes a spectator, ‘‘ Moorfields as full of lan-
terns at these times as the Haymarket is full of
flambeaux of an opera night.”

Never were more disinterested labors than
those of Whitefield. While raising thousands
of pounds for charitable objects, he lived and
died a poor man. At one service he collected
4600 for the people of an obscure village in
Germany, which had been burned down, for
which he received the thanks of the Prussian
sovereign. He maintained for years a house-
hold of over a hundred orphan children in
Georgia, by the voluntary contributions of his
hearers, most of whom themselves were poor.
He even sold his furniture to meet the expenses
of the orphan house. He might, indeed, have
enjoyed ease and leisure if he would. He was
offered £800 a year in Philadelphia to become
a settled pastor for but half the time, leaving

him six months to range the continent. But
140
GEORGE WHITEFIELD, THE GREAT EVANGELIST

he could brook no trammels on his freedom to
go whithersoever the Spirit called him, and the
tempting offer was declined.

The profound humility, the true lowliness of
spirit, of this great man is one of the noblest
traits in his character. He exhorts his friends
at Savannah to ‘‘ pray that he may know him-
self to be, what really he is, less than the least
of them all.” In the midst of his apostolic la-
bors he exclaims, ‘‘O that I may at length
learn to live! I am ashamed of my sloth and
lukewarmness, and long to be on the stretch for
God.” Again, near the close of his life of un-
precedented toil, he writes with undeserved
self-upbraidings, ‘‘O to degin to be a Christian
and a minister of Jesus.”

Notwithstanding the doctrinal differences be-
tween himself and his early friend, John Wes-
ley, he ever cherished toward him feelings of
the deepest and tenderest regard. When a
small-souled bigot asked him if he thought he
should see John Wesley in heaven he replied,
“T fear not, for he will be so near the throne
and you and I so far away that we shall scarce
be able to catch a sight of him.”

In spite of the carpings of mole-eyed malice
few men ever awakened such enthusiastic ad-
miration and warm affection. The common

people heard him gladly. Nor were the higher
10 141
MAKERS OF METHODISM

ranks insensible to the spell of his eloquence.
More than once in America the Legislature and
the Judges’ Sessions adjourned in order to hear
him preach. Philosophers like Franklin and
Hume esteemed his correspondence with them
a privilege, and many titled and noble persons
deemed themselves honored by his friendship.

It is difficult after the lapse of more than a
hundred years since his death to fully compre-
hend the secret of his wonderful eloquence and
of his spell-like power over the souls of men.
If his delivery were the product of art, it was
certainly the perfection of art, for it was en-
tirely concealed.

While he was a great master of words, he
studied especially plainness of speech. His ap-
peals touched every heart and held the atten-
tion of every hearer. A worthy shipbuilder
narrates that he could usually during a sermon
build a ship from stem to stern, but under Mr.
Whitefield he could not lay a single plank.

The voice of this ‘‘son of thunder” was one
of rich, musical quality and of great strength.
The philosophic Franklin computed, by prac-
tical experiment, that he could easily be heard
by thirty thousand persons. Indeed, he often
held audiences of over twenty thousand spell-
bound by his eloquence. His dramatic ability

was such that his auditors seemed actually to see
142
GEORGE WHITEFIELD, THE GREAT EVANGELIST

the things which he described. Once, while
preaching to an audience of sailors at New York,
he thus portrayed in vivid words the terrors of a
shipwreck: ‘‘ Hark! don’t you hear the distant
thunder? Don’t you see those flashes of light-
ning? The air is dark. The tempest rages.
Our masts are gone! What next?” The un-
suspecting tars, as if struck by the power of
magic, arose, and with united voices exclaimed,
‘Take to the long boat, sir!”” The celebrated
actor, Garrick, was heard to say that he would
give a hundred guineas if he could only say
‘““O!” as Mr. Whitefield did. Hume, though
one of the coldest and most skeptical of men,
said it was worth going twenty miles to hear
him. The philosopher, Franklin, as he tells
us, listening toa charity sermon, resolved to give
nothing; but under the power of the preacher's
appeals he ‘‘emptied his pocket wholly in the
collector's plate—gold, silver, and all.”

But the crowning glory of his preaching was
that it was accompanied with the demonstration
of the Spirit and with power. Hundreds were
pricked to the heart and led to repentance and
faith. Ina single week he received a thousand
letters from persons under conviction of sin
through his preaching, and wherever he labored
he won scores and hundreds of trophies of di-

vine grace.
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MAKERS OF METHODISM

A marked characteristic of Whitefield was
his tenderness, his sympathy for sinners, his
burning love for souls. He that would move
others must himself be moved. Hence multi-
tudes were melted into tears because tears were
in the preacher's words, his voice, and often on
his cheeks. ‘‘ You blame me for weeping,” he
says, ‘‘ but how can I help it when you will
not weep for yourselves, although your immor-
tal souls are upon the verge of destruction?”

Whitefield used to pray that he might die in
the pulpit or just after leaving it. His prayer
was almost literally granted him. He died as
he lived, in the midst of labors more abundant
than those of almost any other man. The last
entry in his Journal, July 29, 1770, is that
during the month he had completed a five-hun-
dred-mile circuit in New England, preaching
and traveling through the heat every day.
At Exeter, Mass., he was requested to
preach again. A friend remonstrated, ‘‘Sir,
you are more fit to goto bed than to the pulpit.”
“True,” he replied, and clasping his hands, ex-
claimed, ‘‘ Lord Jesus, if I have not yet finished
my course, let me speak for thee once more in
the fields and then come home and die.” As
he entered the pulpit he seemed like a dying
man. Yet for two hours he exhorted the peo-

ple like a man who already beheld the realities
144
GEORGE WHITEFIELD, THE GREAT EVANGELIST

of the eternal world. At this last service an
intending persecutor, with a pocketful of stones,
said, ‘‘ Sir, I came to break your head, but God
has broken my heart.”’

After the sermon he rode on to Newburyport,
a distance of fifteen miles. As he retired to his
chamber on the last evening of his hfe so many
were desirous of hearing him that he stood
upon the stairs with his candlestick in his hand,
and addressed them with much feeling till the
candle burned low in its socket—like the lamp
of his life then flickering to extinction.

During the night the asthmatic spasms, to
which he had been for so many years a martyr,
came on with increased violence. He was re-
moved to the open window to enable him to
breathe with less difficulty, but after an hour’s
suffering his spirit passed away. He left no
dying testimony; but he had borne so many for
God during his life that there was no need.
His labors in two hemispheres, the eighteen
thousand sermons that he preached, his many
journeyings by sea and land, his undying zeal
for the salvation of souls—these were a testi-
mony which shall be an inspiration and a spell
while the world shall last.

He was buried beneath the pulpit of the Old

South Church, Newburyport, and thither pil-
grims from many lands have come to pay their

145
MAKERS OF METHODISM

tribute of homage to the memory of the great-
est preacher since the days of Chrysostom. One
of these thus describes his visit to Whitefield’s
tomb: ‘We descended to the vault. There
were three coffins before us. Two pastors of the
church lay on either side and the remains of
Whitefield in the center. The cover was slipped
aside, and they lay beneath my eye. I had
stood before his pulpits; I had seen his books,
his ring, his chairs; but never before had I
looked upon part of his very self. The skull,
which is perfect, clean, and fair, I received, as
is the custom, into my hands. Thought and
feeling were busy and we gave expression to
the sentiments that possessed us, by solemn
psalmody and fervent prayer.”

The Quaker poet, Whittier, has thus sketched
in tuneful lines the salient features in the life
and character of this great man, and with the
quotation we close this review of his labors:

“Lo! by the Merrimack Whitefield stands
In the temple that never was made by hands—
Curtains of azure, and crystal wall,
And dome of the sunshine over all—
A homeless pilgrim, with dubious name
Blown about on the winds of fame:
Now as an angel of blessing classed,
And now a mad enthusiast.
Called in his youth to sound and gauge
The moral lapse of his race and age,

146
GEORGE WHITEFIELD, THE GREAT EVANGELIST

And sharp as truth the contrast draw

Of human frailty and perfect law;
Possessed by one dread thought, that lent
Its goad to his fiery temperament,

Up and down the world he went,

A John the Baptist, crying, Repent!

“ And the hearts of people where he passed
Swayed as the reeds sway in the blast,
Under the spell of a voice which took

In its compass the flow of Siloa’s Brook
And the mystical chime of the bells of gold
On the ephod’s hem of the priest of old;
Now the roll of thunder, and now the awe
Of the trumpet heard in the Mount of Law.

“‘A solemn fear on the listening crowd
Fell like the shadow of a cloud;

The sailor reeling from out the ships
Whose masts stood thick in the river-slips
Felt the jest and the curse die on his lips.
Listened the fisherman rude and hard;
The calker rough from the builder’s yard ;
The man of the market left his load;

The teamster leaned on his bending goad;
The maiden and youth beside her felt
Their hearts in a closer union melt,

And saw the flowers of their love in bloom
Down the endless vistas of life to come.
Old age sat feebly brushing away

From his ears the scanty locks of gray,
And careless boyhood, living the free,
Unconscious life of bird and tree,
Suddenly wakened to a sense

Of sin and its guilty consequence.

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MAKERS OF METHODISM

“Tt was as if an angel’s voice

Called the listeners up for their final choice;
As if a strong hand rent apart

The veils of sense from soul and heart,
Showing in light ineffable

The joys of heaven and woes of hell:

All about in the misty air

The hills seem kneeling in silent prayer ;
The rustle of leaves, the moaning sedge,
The water’s lap on its graveled edge,

The wailing pines, and, far and faint,

The wood-dove’s note of sad complaint—
To the solemn voice of the preacher lent

An undertone of low lament ;

And the rote of the sea from its sandy coast,
On the easterly wind now heard, now lost,
Seemed the murmurous sound of the judgment host.

“So the flood of emotion deep and strong
Troubled the land as he swept along,
But left a result of holier lives—
Tenderer mothers and worthier wives ;
The husband and father, whose children fled
And sad wife wept when his drunken tread
Frightened peace from his rooftree’s shade
Anda rock of offense his hearthstone made,
In a strength that was not his own began
To rise from the brute’s to the plane of man;
Old friends embraced, long held apart
By evil counsel and pride of heart;
And penitence saw through misty tears,
In the bow of hope on its cloud of fears,
The promise of heaven's eternal years—
The peace of God for the world’s annoy—
Beauty for ashes, and oil of joy!

148
GEORGE WHITEFIELD, THE GREAT EVANGELIST

“Under the church of Federal Street,
Under the tread of its Sabbath feet,
Walled about by its basement stones

Lie the marvelous preacher’s bones,

No saintly honors to them are shown,

No sign nor miracle have they known;

But he who passes the ancient church
Stops in the shade of its belfry porch

And ponders the wonderful life of him
Who lies at rest in that charnel dim.

Long shall the traveler strain his eye

From the railroad car, as it plunges by,
And the vanishing town behind him search
For the slender spire of the Whitefield Church;
And feel for one moment the ghosts of trade
And fashion and folly and pleasure laid

By the thought of that life of pure intent,
That voice of warning, yet eloquent,

Of one on the errands of angels sent.

And if where he labored the flood of sin
Like a tide from the harbor-bar sets in,
And over a life of time and sense

The church spires lift their vain defense—
Asif to scatter the bolts of God

With the points of Calvin’s thunder-rod—
Still, as the gem of its civic crown,
Precious beyond the world’s renown,

His memory hallows the ancient town!”

149
MAKERS OF METHODISM

Vill
Selina, Countess of Huntingdon

THE history of early Methodism, like the his-
tory of primitive Christianity, shows that not
many mighty, not many noble, were called to
the work of the Gospel. Both won their
trophies chiefly among God's great family of
the poor. But as there were those of Czesar’s
household who acknowledged Christ, so there
were those of noble rank who became the friends
of Methodism. One of the most notable of these
was Selina, Countess of Huntingdon.

The names of Wesley and Whitefield are in-
separably joined as the apostles of Methodism,
yet a difference of opinion on doctrinal grounds
soon led to a divergence of operations and a di-
vision of interests. Whitefield was destined to
be the flaming herald whose mission it was to
revive the almost extinct spiritual life of the
Church of England and to establish that Calvin-
istic Methodism which is so potent for good in the
principality of Wales to the present day.

It was with this branch of Methodism that
Lady Huntingdon was connected. She was of

noble birth, the daughter of the Earl of Ferrers,
150
SELINA, COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON

and was remotely connected with the royal
family. In her early life she was married to
Theophilus Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon.
Lady Elizabeth and Lady Margaret Hastings,
her sisters-in-law, had become interested in the
Oxford Methodists. Through their influence
and through severe personal and family afflic-
tion the countess was led to a religious life and
to a strong sympathy with the methods and
principles of the evangelists, especially of
Whitefield.

Her husband sent for Bishop Benson to restore
her to a ‘‘saner mind,” but the learned prelate
failed in the attempt. Although she moved in
the most aristocratic circles,the countess was not
ashamed of the lowly and despised Methodists
through whom she had received such spiritual
benefit. She invited John Wesley to her resi-
dence at Downington Park, where he preached
to fashionable congregations the same uncom-
promising Gospel that he declared at Gwennap
Pit or Moorfields Common. With a wise pre-
vision of one of the greatest evangelisticagencies
of the age, she specially encouraged the employ-
ment of a lay ministry, against the strong preju-
dices of the Wesleys.

When Wesley’s first Conference was held in
London, in 1744, the entire body was entertained

at her elegant mansion at Chelsea. She used her
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MAKERS OF METHODISM

social influence in high places with much effect on
behalf of brave John Nelson, who had been im-
pressed into the army and suffered bonds and
imprisonment for conscience’ sake. He was
rescued from his persecutors and set free to
range the kingdom, proclaiming everywhere the
great salvation.

In 1748 Lady Huntingdon became a widow.
Henceforth her life was devoted to the promo-
tion of Christ’s kingdom. Whitefield became
one of her permanent chaplains, and the trem-
bling plumes on the heads of the court dames in
the elegant salons of the mansion at Chelsea,
no less than the tear-washed furrows on the
grimy faces of the Cornish miners, attested
the power of hismessage. High-born and titled
hearers were brought under the influence of the
simple Gospel story, and not infrequently with
saving and sanctifying results. Lord St. John
became a convert from the fashionable skepti-
cism of the times to the faith of Christ. His
brother, the witty Bolingbroke, complimented
the preacher, but despised his message. The
wife of Lord Chesterfield and her sister, the
Countess of Delitz, received the Gospel and died
in the triumphs of faith. Many ‘elect ladies ”’
of the highest rank became devout Christians,
adorning with their holy and useful lives the

doctrines of the Lord Jesus.
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SELINA, COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON

Many of Whitefield’s courtly hearers were
doubtless attracted by the fashionable character
of the assemblage, as they would be to the
opera. Others were fascinated by the eloquence
of the preacher, as they would be by the skill
of anactor. The skeptical Hume, for instance,
said that he would go twenty miles to hear him;
and Garrick, the actor, who doubtless took les-
sons in style from his matchless elocution, de-
clared that he could make one weep by the way
in which he pronounced the word Mesopotamia.

Chesterfield paid him courtly compliments,
and Horace Walpole employed his keen wit
upon the earnest preacher whose solemn mes-
sages they both neglected and despised. The no-
torious Countess of Suffolk, the fair and frail
favorite of George II, procured admission to one
of the fashionable religious services. Mr. White-
field’s burning denunciations of sin, which probed
her guilty conscience to the quick, were an un-
wonted and unwelcome experience to the proud
court beauty. She flew into a violent passion,
abused the countess to her face, and declared
that she had been deliberately insulted. Deeply
mortified, she went her way and returned no
more.

Nor was the zeal of the high-born and pious
lady whose life and character are the subject of

our present study restrained to mere passive
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MAKERS OF METHODISM

patronage of those zealous evangelists—a sort
of dilettante piety that cost her little. She proved
her sincerity by her self-sacrifice and by her
generous donations to the cause of God. She
curtailed her expenditure and reduced her do-
mestic establishment that she might build chap-
els for the poor. She gave up her liveried
servants and carriage and sold her jewels that
she might have money for charitable purposes.
In London, Bristol, and Dublin she purchased
public halls and theaters and renovated dilapi-
dated chapels that the Gospel might be preached
to the untaught masses. Many new chapels
were also erected by her liberal aid in England,
Ireland, and especially in the principality of
Wales. In these philanthropic labors she ex-
pended not less than half a million of dollars
sum relatively much larger then than now.
The practical heathenism of a large portion
of Great Britain, notwithstanding the vast or-
ganization and immense revenues of the Estab-
lished Church, appealed strongly to her Chris-
tian sympathy. She devised a plan for the
evangelization of the kingdom. With a shrewd
practical method she divided all England into
six districts, to be systematically visited by
traveling ‘‘ canvassers,” as she called them, who
were zealously to preach the Gospel in every

village, town, and hamlet in the country. With
154

 

a
SELINA, COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON

her were associated in these pious labors some
of the most learned and devout evangelical cler-
gymen and dissenting ministersin the kingdom,
such as Venn, Madan, Shirley, Romaine, Top-
lady, Dr. Conyers, Berridge, Howel Harris,
Fletcher, Benson, Whitefield, the Wesleys, and
many others.

With certain like-minded noble ladies she
made tours through many parts of England and
Wales, accompanied by eminent evangelists,
who everywhere preached the Gospel to atten-
tive multitudes. Where they had opportunity
they preached in the parish churches or in Wes-
leyan or dissenting chapels; indeed, some of
the evangelists were parish clergymen and had
churches of their own. But frequently the
churches were closed against the itinerants; in
which cases they preached in the churchyards,
on the highways, or in the fields. Under the
burning words of Whitefield all Yorkshire and
the neighboring counties were kindled to a
flame; then, pressing on to Scotland or over
sea to America, he left to his fellow-workers the
task of organizing into churches the multitudes
of converts quickened into spiritual life by his
apostolic labors. In this good work the Countess
of Huntingdon and the elect ladies who jour-
neyed with her took a profound interest, yet she

never transcended what was deemed the bounds
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MAKERS OF METHODISM

of decorum for her sex by taking any part in
the public assemblies. While the countess
counseled the converts privately and assisted
the evangelists in planning their labors, she was
only a quiet hearer at the public preaching.

The record of a grand ‘ field day” on one of
those preaching excursions is preserved. It was
at Cheltenham, in Gloucestershire. The use of
the parish church was refused for preaching,
but Whitefield mounted a tombstone in the
churchyard and addressed the assembled thou-
sands from the words, ‘‘Ho! everyone that
thirsteth, come ye to the waters.” Many of the
hearers fell prostrate on the graves, others sobbed
aloud, and allseemed stricken with a solemn awe.
‘«Whitefield’s words of exhortation,” says Venn,
“cut like a sword.” ‘‘ Aremarkable power from
on high,’”’ wrote the countess, ‘‘ accompanied
the message, and many felt the arrows of dis-
tress.”

Though excluded from the parish church, the
Methodist evangelists were not unbefriended.
A nobleman of the highest rank, the friend of
his sovereign, a member of the Privy Council
and Secretary of State—the Earl of Dartmouth—
stood by their sides among the graves, and
opened his hospitable mansion for their recep-
tion. That night Whitefield administered the

sacrament in his house, and the next day, stand-
156
SELINA, COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON

ing on a table beside the door, preached to the
multitude that filled the rooms within and
thronged the grounds without.

It was this Lord Dartmouth to whom Cowper
refers in the lines:

“We boast some rich ones whom the Gospel sways,
And one who wears a coronet and prays.”

His name is commemorated in America by Dart-
mouth College, of which institution he was a
patron. ‘‘They call my Lord Dartmouth an
enthusiast,’ said George III, who always had a
profound respect for religion, ‘‘ but surely he
says nothing but what any Christian may and
ought to say.”

Through the influence of Lady Huntingdon
the friendship of the Wesleys and Whitefield
became firmly cemented. These once estranged
but now reconciled friends, unable to agree in
doctrinal opinion, wisely agreed to differ, but
kept up to the close of their lives a kindly inter-
change of Christian courtesies. They formed
with each other and with the countess—their
common friend and the peacemaker between
them—a sort of formal ‘‘ quadruple alliance,” as
Charles Wesley called it, whereby they agreed
to cooperate in their common work and to knit
more firmly the bonds of Christian fellowship

between them.
11 157
MAKERS OF METHODISM

For John Wesley's genius for organization
Lady Huntingdon had a profound regard. In
this respect he was much superior to his more
eloquent colleague, Whitefield. Indeed, the
greatest historian of modern times has bestowed
on him the eulogy of having had ‘‘a genius for
government not inferior to that of Richelieu."*
The permanent and widespread organization of
Arminian Methodism, as contrasted with the
comparatively evanescent results of Whitefield’s
labors, is largely the result of Wesley’s superior
gifts of ecclesiastical legislation.

Far more than Whitefield did Lady Hunting-
don possess this qualification, and had she been
a man, the history and present status of Calvin-
istic Methodism might have been very differ-
ent. She was deeply convinced of the need of a
college for the training of ministers for the nu-
merous chapels which, through her zeal and lib-
erality, had sprung up in many parts of the
country. She broached her scheme to John
Wesley and others and received their hearty
approval. A romantic and dilapidated old
castle at Trevecca, in Wales, was accordingly
purchased and fitted up as a place of residence
and instruction for candidates for the ministry.
This enterprise exhausted her means, but she
was assisted by contributions from titled and

 

* Macaulay, Review of Southey's Colloguies.

158
SELINA, COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON

wealthy ladies who sympathized with her
project.

The saintly and accomplished Fletcher be-
came the first president, and the learned Wes-
leyan commentator, Joseph Benson, its head
master. The first student was a poor collier,
who subsequently became an able and useful
vicar in the Established Church. The ancient
cloisters were soon thronged with earnest stu-
dents. No conditions of admission were im-
posed other than conversion to God and a pur-
pose to enter the Christian ministry, either in
the Established Church or in any dissenting
body. In this truly catholic institution the stu-
dents received lodging, maintenance, instruc-
tion, and an annual suit of clothes, at the
expense of the countess.

The first anniversary of the college was cele-
brated as a religious festival of holy rejoicing.
For nearly a week previously the scattered evan-
gelists of the ‘‘ Connection” continued to arrive
in the courtyard of the picturesque old castle.
Very different was the scene from those of tilt
and tourney with which it had resounded in the
days of knightly chivalry. Hymns and prayers
and sermons in English and Welsh echoed be-
neath the ancient arches. On the great day of
the feast Wesley and Fletcher, Shirley and

Howel Harris, Arminian and Calvinist, English
159
MAKERS OF METHODISM

and Welsh, preached and prayed and adminis-
tered the sacrament and celebrated the ‘‘ love
feast”’ together, all differences being forgotten
in their common brotherhood in Christ. The
ministers all dined together with Lady Hunting-
don, while great baskets of bread and meat were
distributed to the multitude in the courtyard.
Thus they all kept high festival with gladness
of heart before the Lord.

Still it was not then the purpose of either Wes-
ley or Whitefield or Lady Huntingdon to estab-
lisha new sect. They were all attached members
of the Church of England. Not till they were
thrust forth from its embrace did they organize
separate societies. In order to protect her nu-
merous chapels from suppression or appropria-
tion by the Established Church Lady Hunting-
don was obliged to take advantage of the Act of
Toleration, and thus convert her ‘‘ Connection ”’
into a dissenting community. The clergymen
of the Establishment, who had hitherto been her
most influential allies, now withdrew their aid,
and preached no more in her chapels.

The countess, not content with the success of
her evangelistic plans in Great Britain, resolved
to extend her efforts to the New World. White-
field died in 1769. The support of the orphan-
age and of the mission work in Georgia, objects

of his deepest solicitude, became the cherished
160
SELINA, COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON

purpose of the Countess of Huntingdon. She
resolved to send a principal and pastor to the
orphanage, and a band of missionaries to labor
among the colonists and blacks.

Before they sailed the missionaries preached
daily to immense audiences in Whitefield’s Tab-
ernacle and in the open air on Tower Hill. At
length, amid many prayers, not unmingled with
the tears of thousands of spectators, the ‘‘ des-
tined vessel, richly freighted,’’ sailed on its
voyage. The missionaries had great success,
especially among the colored people, and it
seemed probable that Calvinistic Methodism
would become the predominant type of religious
belief throughout the Southern colonies of North
America.

But Providence had willed otherwise. The
orphanage was destroyed by fire. The Revolu-
tionary War entirely disconcerted the plans of
the countess. Most of the missionaries returned
to Great Britain. The countess had acquired
large estates in Georgia, which she held for
missionary purposes. She corresponded with
Washington for their recovery, and Benjamin
Franklin acted as one of her trustees, but the
disturbances caused by the prolonged war and
severance of the colonies from the mother
country prevented the restoration of her estates.

Full of years, as full of honors, like a ripe
161
MAKERS OF METHODISM

sheaf waiting to be gathered home, the Count-
ess of Huntingdon drew nearherend. Earthly
distinctions had been hers, worldly wealth and
troops of friends. But as she bent beneath the
weight of four and eighty years, and faced the
mysteries of the spirit world, what was the
ground ef her confidence and hope? Simply
her humble trust in the atonement of her Re-
deemer. As the outward body failed the in-
ward spirit was renewed day by day.

Amid the sufferings of a lingering and pain-
ful sickness she exclaimed: ‘‘I am well; all is
well—well forever. I see wherever I turn my
eyes, whether I live or die, nothing but victory.
The coming of the Lord draweth nigh! The
thought fills my soul with joy unspeakable—my
soul is filled with glory. Iam as in the element
of heaven itself. I am encircled in the arms of
love and mercy; I long to be at home; O, I
long to be at home!” Almost with her dying
breath she exultingly declared, ‘‘My work is
done; I have nothing to do but to go to my

Father.”
« Servant of God, well done!
Rest from thy loved employ ;
The battle’s fought, the victory’s won;
Enter thy Master’s joy.”

The very year that this aged saint passed

away—1791—John Wesley alsodied. Thus de-
162
SELINA, COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON

parted from the toils of earth to the everlasting
reward of heaven two of the most remarkable
spirits of the eighteenth century, who more,
we think, than any others left their impress on
the age.

One of the most striking proofs of the moral
and intellectual superiority of the Countess of
Huntingdon was the influence that she exerted
during a long series of years over many of the
most eminent men of the time. Her private
character was one of great simplicity and beauty.
Says one who knew her well, ‘‘In conversing
with her you forgot the earldom in her exhibi-
tion of humble, loving piety.” She sometimes
asserted her woman’s prerogative in her tenacity
of opinion and of purpose, but her opinions
were the result of conscientious conviction and
her purposes were purely unselfish. Her contri-
butions to the needy were liberal to excess, so
much so as often to leave herself embarrassed.
At her death she left twenty thousand dollars
to the poor. The residue of her large fortune
was left for the endowment of sixty-four chapels,
which had been erected chiefly through her
efforts in different parts of the kingdom.

In the principality of Wales the influence of
the Calvinistic Methodism of ‘‘ Lady Hunting-
don’s Connection” has been the most strongly

felt. Largely as the result of the stimulus that
163
MAKERS OF METHODISM

it imparted, the thirty dissenting chapels of 1715
have increased to twenty-three hundred, so that
‘‘a chapel now dots nearly every three square
miles of the country, and a million people—
nearly the whole Welsh population—are found

attending public worship some part of every

Sabbath.”
164
JOHN FLETCHER AND Mary BOSANQUET

IX

John Fletcher and Mary Bosanquet

THE picturesque shores of the Lake of Geneva
have many religious and literary associations.
Calvin and Zwingle, Voltaire and Rosseau,
Madame de Staél and Madame Récamier, Gib-
bon and Byron, have given its terraced slopes
and vine-clad hills a perpetual interest. At
Nyon, the refuge of the persecuted Vaudois,
beneath the snadow of its ivy-mantled castle,
whose massy walls ten feet thick bear witness
to the feudal tenure of the twelfth century,
was born one of the most noteworthy of the
Makers of Methodism. He was of an ancient
family, allied to the princely house of Savoy.
The comfortable mansion, conspicuous amid
the humbler houses of the village, is still occu-
pied by the descendant Flechéres, who continue
to maintain the name and religious reputation
of the family.

Here Jean Guillaume de la Flechére, or John
William Fletcher, as we would say, was born in
1729. He was designated by his pious Protes-
tant parents for the ministry of the Reformed

Church. He, therefore, received at the Univer-
165
MAKERS OF METHODISM

sity of Geneva a thorough education in the
classical and oriental languages and in philoso-
phy. His scholarship made him the pride of
the university, and he carried off most of its
prizes. He could not, however, accept the
Calvinistic doctrines of the Genevan Church.
He therefore declined to enter its ministry.

Like many of the Swiss, he adopted a military
life,and sought service with a foreign govern-
ment. The young soldier of fortune first offered
his sword to Portugal, and received a captain’s
commission in the service of that country, with
orders to join an expedition for Brazil. He
was, however, by accident, or rather, let us
say, by an all-wise Providence, prevented from
sailing. A servant, on the very morning of his
intended embarkation, spilled a kettle of boiling
water on his legs. This confined him for some
time to bed. The vessel in which he was to sail
was lost at sea.

On the invitation of an uncle, who promised
to secure a commission for him, he went to
Flanders. But the death of his relative and the
termination of the war again disappointed his
hopes.

He now turned, as did many of his country-
men, to London, the great world-metropolis.
His knowledge of ancient and modern languages

well fitted him for the office of tutor, which posi-
166
JOHN FLETCHER AND MARY BOSANQUET

tion he accepted. In London, his curiosity be-
ing aroused by a casual conversation, he went
to hear the Methodists. The doctrine of con-
version and of the full assurance of faith came
like a revelation to his soul. ‘‘Is it possible,”
he wrote, ‘‘that I who have always been ac-
counted so religious, who have made divinity
my study and received the premium for piety
from my university for writings on divine sub-
jects—is it possible that I should be so ignorant
as not to know what faith is?”’ For months he
was the subject of intense convictions of sin
and deep searchings of heart. Indeed, it was
not till after two years of mental struggle
that he was able to exercise that faith that
saveth the soul.

At the urgent solicitation of John Wesley he
accepted orders in the Established Church in
his twenty-eighth year. No man ever adorned
the doctrines of the Lord Jesus with more saintly
walk and conversation and more utter consecra-
tion of soul. He continued for some time in
London, assisting John Wesley, laboring among
the poor in the prisons and among the rich in
Lady Huntingdon’s mansion. He was offered
a living at Dunham, which presented many of
the coveted advantages of a rural rectory.
‘““The parish was small, its labor light, the

income good, being four hundred pounds.”’ But
167
MaKERS OF METHODISM

the zealous evangelist declined the offer, as
affording too much money for too little work.
He therefore accepted, instead of the learned
leisure of Dunham, the strenuous toil and
meager income of Madeley.

This was an obscure parish in a densely
peopled mining and manufacturing neighbor-
hood. It shared the moral degradation only
too common in the middle of the eighteenth
century; but his tireless zeal and Christian de-
votion wrought a moral transformation through-
out the entire region. The vicarage of Madeley
became second in historic interest, throughout
the Protestant world, only to the rectory of
Epworth, in which Methodism was born. The
people of the parish were dull and apathetic,
devoted to the coarse amusements of badger-
baiting and prize fighting, but Fletcher with
apostolic fervor proclaimed the truths of the
Gospel, ‘‘ warning every man, and teaching
every man in all wisdom ”’ from house to house
daily.

For months he went about the village at five
o’clock on Sunday morning ringing a hand bell,
that no one might be able to excuse his neglect
of public worship on the ground of not being
awakened in time. ‘‘ Now he appeared sud-
denly at vulgar entertainments,” says Dr. Schaff,

‘cand with Knoxlike earnestness preached to
168
JOHN FLETCHER AND MARY BOSANQUET

the astounded revelers upon the folly of for-
bidden pleasure.” ‘‘Those sinners,” says John
Wesley, ‘‘that tried to hide themselves from
him he pursued to every corner of his parish by
all sorts of means, public and private, early
and late.”

This moral earnestness provoked opposition
and persecution. While many were reclaimed
from their evil lives, the more vicious were
exasperated to greater violence. A  bull-bait
was attempted on one occasion near the spot
where he had announced a public service, and
a part of the rabble was appointed to ‘‘ bait the
parson; to pull him from his horse, and to
set the dogs on him.” He escaped only by a
providential detention at the funeral of a pa-
rishioner.

‘¢ His preaching against drunkenness,” says
Dr. Abel Stevens, whose narrative we abridge,
‘‘aroused all the maltmen and publicans of the
town against him. A magistrate threatened
him with his cane and with imprisonment, and
many of the neighboring gentry and clergy
joined his persecutors. A clergyman posted
on the church door a paper charging him with
schism and rebellion. Some of his friends were
arrested. He was, in fine, subjected to the
usual treatment of the Methodist clergy of the

times, and he labored with their usual zeal and
169
MAKERS OF METHODISM

success. With incessant preaching he com-
bined the most diligent pastoral labors. He
went from house to house, sympathizing with
the afflicted, helping the poor, ministering to
the sick, and admonishing the vicious.

‘‘His liberality to the poor is said by his
successor in the parish to have been scarcely
credible. He led a hfe of severe abstinence
that he might feed the hungry; he clothed him-
self in cheap attire that he might clothe the
naked; he sometimes unfurnished his house
that he might supply suffering families with
necessary articles. Thus devoted to his holy
office, he soon changed the tide of opposition
which had raged against him, and won the
reverence and admiration of his people; and
many looked upon their homes as consecrated
by his visits.”

Although of foreign birth and training, he
preached in English with marvelous power,
and, in the opinion of John Wesley, if he had
but physical strength, he would have been the
most eloquent preacher in England.

‘‘His devout habit of mind,” continues Dr.
Stevens, ‘‘quickly matured into saintliness it-
self. We look in vain through the records of
Roman or Protestant piety for a more perfect
example of the consecration of the whole life,

inward and outward. For a time he erred by
170
JOHN FLETCHER AND MARY BOSANQUET

his asceticism, living on vegetables and bread,
and devoting two whole nights each week to
meditation and prayer, errors which he after-
ward acknowledged. He received Wesley's
doctrine of perfection, and not only wrote in
its defense, but exemplified it through a life of
purity, charity, and labor which was as fault-
less, perhaps, as was ever lived by mortal man.
Even in theological controversy his spirit was
never impeachable.” ‘‘Sir, he was aluminary,”
said Venn to a brother clergyman. ‘‘A lumi-
nary did I say? He was a sun.” ‘‘I have
known,” he added, ‘‘all the great men of
these fifty years, but I have known none like
him.”

In 1768 Fletcher was invited to become presi-
dent of Lady Huntingdon’s college for the
ministerial training of young men at Trevecca,
in Wales. He accepted the position, but did
not leave his parish. ‘‘ His frequent visits to the
college were received,” writes its head master,
Benson, the Methodist commentator, ‘‘like those
of an angel of God.”

The fascination exercised by this saintly soul
is reflected in the enthusiastic language of this
generally cool and scholarly writer. ‘‘ The
reader,” he says, ‘‘ will pardon me if he thinks
I exceed; my heart kindles while I write.

Here it was I saw, shall I say an angel in
171
MAKERS OF METHODISM

human flesh? I should not far exceed the truth
if I said so. But here I saw a descendant of
fallen Adam so fully raised above the ruins of
the fall that, though by the body he was tied
down to earth, yet was his whole conversation
in heaven; yet was his life from day to day hid
with Christ in God. Prayer, praise, love, and
zeal, all-ardent, elevated above what one would
think attainable in this state of frailty, were the
elements in which he continually lived. Lan-
guages, arts, sciences, grammar, rhetoric, logic,
even divinity itself, as it is called, were all laid
aside when he appeared in the schoolroom
among the students. And they seldom heark-
ened long before they were all in tears, and
every heart caught fire from the flame that
burned in his soul!”

Closing hisaddresses he wouldsay, ‘‘ Asmany
of you asare athirst for the fullness of the Spirit
of God follow me into my room.” Many usually
hastened thither, and it was like going into the
holiest of holies. Two or three hours were
spent there in such prevailing prayer as seemed
to bring heaven down to earth. ‘‘ Indeed,”
says Benson, ‘‘I frequently thought, while at-
tending to his heavenly discourse and divine
spirit, that he was so different from and su-
perior to the generality of mankind as to look

more like Moses or Elijah, or some prophet or
172
JOHN FLETCHER AND MARY BOSANQUET

apostle come again from the dead, than a mortal
man dwelling in a house of clay!”

In the judgment of Southey, ‘‘ No age or coun-
try has ever produced a man of more enlivened
piety or more perfect charity. Noage has ever
possessed a more apostolic minister.” He was
John Wesley's most faithful friend and fellow-
helper, and was his choice as his personal suc-
cessor. But this responsibility he modestly
declined, and himself passed away before the
death of the founder of Methodism.

The Trevecca College was entirely under the
influence of Lady Huntingdon's Connection—the
Calvinistic Methodists. Its growing divergence
from Arminian doctrine led to Fletcher’s resig-
nation of the presidency, but without interrup-
tion of kind and Christian relations.

An unhappy controversy, characterized by
only too much bitterness and theological rancor,
now arose between the Wesleyan and Calvinistic
Methodists. An exception must be made, how-
ever, in the case of Fletcher’s famous Checks
to Antinomtianism. Never has theological dis-
cussion been conducted in a more saintly spirit
and with more Christian courtesy. ‘‘ His contro-
versial pamphlets,” says Dr. Stevens, ‘‘ may be
read by devout men even as aids to devotion;
they are severe only in the keenness of their

arguments; they glow with a continuous but
12 173
MAKERS OF METHODISM

unobstrusive strain of Christian exhortation.
The argument alternates with pleas for peace,
and with directions ‘how to secure the blessings
of peace and brotherly love.’ They are read
more to-day,” he continues, ‘‘than they were
during the excitement of the controversy. They
control the opinions of the largest and most
effective body of evangelical clergymen on the
earth.”

‘« His style,” says a competent critic, ‘‘is clear,
forcible, and sometimes ornate. He discusses
the highest problems—as theories of the free-
dom of the will, prescience, and fatalism—in a
manner which interests the ordinary reader, and
the spiritual argument is cogent and thorough.
No writer has so fairly balanced and reconciled
the apparently opposite passages of Scripture.”

Fletcher not only stated the position of his
opponent with fairness and candor, but in the
case of Dr. Berridge proffered to print a reply
with his own pamphlet and circulate it gratu-
itously, ‘‘ to show that they made a loving war.”

Fletcher afterward made a personal visit to
Dr. Berridge. As he entered the parsonage
Berridge ran to him, took him into his arms, and
wept. ‘‘ My dear brother,” he sobbed, ‘this is
indeed a satisfaction I never expected. How
could we write against each other when we both

aim at the same thing—the glory of God and the
174
JOHN FLETCHER AND Mary BOSANQUET

good of souls?’ The servants being called in,
Fletcher offered up a prayer filled with petitions
for their being led by the Holy Spirit to greater
degrees of sanctification and usefulness as min-
isters.

His broken health compelled the Swiss pastor
to return for four years to his native land. Its
snow-clad hills became to him the ‘‘ Delectable
Mountains,’ whence he had nearer and clearer
vision of the city of the great King. He walked
in the land of Beulah, quite on the verge of
heaven. He preached, as strength permitted,
to the peasant people, and drank health and re-
freshing from the pure air and inspiring scenery
of the shores of Lake Leman.

Like many of the early Methodist preachers,
John Fletcher had been too entirely engrossed
in evangelistic toil, too much exposed to calumny
and persecution, too poor in worldly estate, to
permit of courtship and marriage. Yet he was
not insusceptible to the charm and blessedness
of wedded love. Five and twenty years before
the date of which we write the youthful beauty
and lovely character of Mary Bosanquet had won
his heart. But she was rich and he was poor.
Travel and study and abounding labors, and
perhaps somewhat ascetic notions, postponed for
long years the consummation of his dream of

domestic happiness. Now these long-severed
175
MaKERS OF METHODISM

lives were to meet and flow on side by side with
deepened joy.

We have seen by what strange leadings of
God’s providence John Fletcher had been turned
froma life of earthly ambition to one of heavenly
zeal. No less remarkable was the divine guid-
ance by which Mary Bosanquet was saved from
a career of fashion and of refined selfishness and
consecrated to one of Christian service in the up-
lifting of the poor, the lowly, and the lost. Her
memoir, written by herself, is a remarkable
record of religious experience; and, as one of
the classics of Methodist biography, has helped
to mold the character and kindle the piety of
successive generations. From this we sketch
the salient events of her eventful life.

Mary Bosanquet was the daughter of wealthy
and worldly parents. She was born in the year
1739, and in her youth was surrounded by as-
sociations unfavorable toa religious life. Never-
theless, she very early became the subject of
spiritual influences. When in her fifth year,
she says, she began to have much concern about
hersoul. She was a backward child, she naively
confesses, and not very well read in the Scrip-
tures at that early age—it would be very remark-
able if she were. She could not, however, help
observing the careless lives of those around her,

till she began to doubt whether the Bible really
176
JOHN FLETCHER AND MARY BOSANQUET

meant what it said about the future life and the
unseen world.

‘« About this time,” she writes, ‘‘ there came
a servant maid to live with my father who had
heard and felt some little of the power of in-
ward religion. It was among the people called
Methodists she had received her instructions.”
The conversation of this lowly and unlettered
girl deepened the religious convictions of Mary
Bosanquet. She thought if she could only be-
come a Methodist she would besure of salvation.
But she soon found that it was not being joined
to any people that would save her, but being
joined by a living faith to Christ.

Still this way of faith seemed dark to her
mind. When between seven and eight years
old, as she mused on the question, ‘‘ What can
it be to know my sins forgiven?” she felt
that if it were to die a martyr, she could do it,
and she wished that the papists would come and
burn her. But soon she was enabled to grasp
the vital truth of salvation by faith, and ex-
claimed with joyful fervor, ‘‘I do, I do rely on
Jesus; and God counts me righteous for what he
has done and suffered, and has forgiven me all
my sins!” ‘I was surprised,” she adds, ‘‘ that
I could not find out this before ;”? a common ex-
perience of the soul on learning the simplicity

of the way of salvation.
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MAKERS OF METHODISM

Miss Bosanquet’s worldly-minded parents, as
their strange, unworldly child grew up, instead
of fostering her religious feelings, endeavored to
dissipate them by fashionable amusements. She
was introduced to the gayeties of London society
and taken to the ball and playhouse and other
gay resorts. But she found no pleasure in these,
to her, dreary amusements. ‘‘If I knew how
to find the Methodists, or any who would show
me how to please God,” she wrote, ‘‘I would
tear off all my fine things and run through the
firetothem.” ‘If ever] am my own mistress,”
she prophetically exclaimed, ‘‘ 1 will spend half
the day in working for the poor and the other
half in prayer.”

At length she made the acquaintance of some
of the Methodists from whom so much spiritual
profit was anticipated. But they did not quite
answer the expectations of this earnest soul,
hungering and thirsting after religious fellow-
ship. ‘But we must not form our judgment
from the rich,” she remarks; ‘‘ let us wait till
we get acquainted with some of the poor among
them; perhaps they will be the right Metho-
dists, and more like the first Christians.’ It is
not by concessions to the world, nor by the
adoption of its spirit on the part of the Church,
that the followers of fashion will be lured from

its follies and brought to Christ.
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JOHN FLETCHER AND Mary BOSANQUET

In her fourteenth year Miss Bosanquet re-
ceived the rite of confirmation in the stately
cathedral of St. Paul’s, London. It was to her
no idle form, but an intense reality—a solemn
renewal of her covenant with God and consecra-
tion of herself to his service. She soon felt
that she could no longer attend the theater, a
place of fashionable resort to which her parents
were addicted.

‘«T considered the playhouse,” wrote this ma-
ture young maiden, ‘‘ had a tendency to weaken
every Christian temper and to strengthen all
that was contrary; to represent vice under the
false color of virtue, and to lead, in every re-
spect, to the spirit of the world—the friendship
of which, the apostle declares, is enmity with
God.” She therefore begged to be left at home,
and on the refusal of her request laid open her
whole heart to her father. Notwithstanding his
remonstrance, she was firm in her obedience to
the dictates of her conscience. It was a season
of great trial, she wrote, but the Lord stood by
her and strengthened her.

One incident, recorded as occurring in her
seventeenth year, gives us a glimpse of the gay
world in the middle of the last century. With
her father and a numerous company she visited
the Royal George, the man-of-war whose subse-

quent tragic fate was made the subject of Cow-
179
MAKERS OF METHODISM

per’s pathetic ballad.* When they got to the
ship ‘‘it seemed like a town, such a variety of

places like shops were all around.” The com-
mander, after doing the honors of the ship,
proposed a dance. ‘‘ Now, Miss Bosanquet,

what will you do? You cannot run away,”
gayly queried one of her friends, for her scru-
ples were well known. Just then the unex-
pected approach of the Prince of Wales (afterward
George III) and Admiral Anson was announced,
and the dance was adjourned szwe die, to the
great relief of Miss Bosanquet.

While in the boat which conveyed them from
the ship the party was exposed to imminent peril

from a rough sea. ‘‘ How are you so calm?”
one of the votaries of pleasure asked our hero-
ine. ‘*Weare in God’s hands,” she answered;

‘‘T am quite ready to sink or to be saved.”’

Her convictions of duty were exposed to an-
other trial. A gentleman of wealth and religious
profession sought her hand in marriage. Her
parents and even her religious advisers favored
the match. She could not, however, reconcile
the fashionable habits of her suitor with his

 

* Tt will be remembered that the vessel sank in port, with all her crew, while
careened for the purpose of cleaning her copper sheathing. As the ballad
has it—

** His sword was in its sheath,
His fingers held the pen,
‘When Kempenfelt went down
With twice four hundred men.”
180
JoHN FLETCHER AND Mary BOSANQUET

religious professions, and neither her ‘‘ under-
standing nor affection could approve the pro-
posal;” so his offer was kindly but firmly
declined. She was reserved for a nobler destiny
than to be a mere leader of fashion.

Through mental worry and physical weakness
she fell into a low, nervous fever, which her par-
ents attributed to her religion. Severe med-
ical treatment and confinement in a dark room
were ordered. ‘‘ Will you put me in a mad-
house, papa?” asked the poor, distraught girl.
‘“No,” replied her father, ‘‘but you must be
shut up at home unless you strive against this
lowness.”’

But God graciously helped her in her extrem-
ity. She seemed to see a light and hear a voice
which assured her, ‘‘ Thou shalt walk with me
in white,” and she was greatly benefited by the
society of some of the wise mothers in Israel of
London Methodism. She satisfied herself by
seven good reasons which she records that she
ought no longer to conform, in the matter of
dress and personal adornment, with the some-
what imperious requirements of the fashion of
the times. ‘‘ I was perplexed,” she writes, ‘‘to
know how far to conform and how far to resist.
I feared, on the one hand, disobedience to my
parents, and, on the other hand, disobedience to

God.”
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MAKERS OF METHODISM

One day her father said to her, ‘‘ There is a
particular promise which I require of you, that
you will never, on any occasion, either now or
hereafter, attempt to make your brothers what
you call a Christian.”

‘‘T think, sir,” she answered, ‘‘I dare not con-
sent to that.”

“Then,” he replied, ‘‘ you force me to put
you out of my house. I do not know,” he con-
tinued, ‘‘that you ever disobliged me willfully
in your life but only in these fancies.”

She was now twenty-one years of age and had
a small fortune of her own. She therefore
engaged a maidservant and took lodgings, but
did not go to them, hoping that she might still
remain beneath her father’s roof. One day her
mother sent her word that she must leave that
night for her lodgings, and that the family car-
riage would convey her personal effects. She
bade farewell to the servants, who stood in a
row in tears, and went forth from her father’s
house, banished for conscience’ sake.

Her lodgings had not, as yet, chair, nor
table, nor bed; so, after a supper of bread, rank
butter, and water, this delicate child of luxury
lay upon the floor in the cold moonlight which
streamed through the uncurtained windows into
her room, the sweetsolemnity whereof, she writes,

well agreed with the tranquillity of her spirit.
182
JOHN FLETCHER AND MARY BOSANQUET

She thus records her feelings under this trial:
‘‘T am cast out of my father’s house. ‘I know
the heart of a stranger.’ I am exposed to the
world, and know not what snares may be gath-
ering aroundme. I havea weak understanding
and but little grace.’’ She, therefore, cried
unto God and found a sweet calm overspread
her spirit. She remembered the words, ‘‘ He
that loveth father or mother more than me is
not worthy of me,” and was cheered by the
promise, ‘‘ When thy father and mother forsake
thee, the Lord shall take thee up.”

She was, however, permitted to visit her
home, but the parting as she took leave, she
says, made the wound bleed afresh.

She was soon joined by Sarah Ryan, a pious
widow, and devoted her life thenceforth to
works of Christian charity. She shortly after
removed to a house of her own at Laytonstone,
her native village, and converted it into a school
for orphan children and home for destitute
women. Before long she had received thirty-
five children and thirty-four grown-up persons.
With the aid of her friend, Mrs. Ryan, she de-
voted herself with enthusiasm to this work.
For economical reasons the whole household
were clothed in dark purple cotton dresses of
uniform pattern. Many, both of the children

and adults, were sickly, and demanded much
183
MAKERS OF METHODISM

physical care, and all received wise moral cuid-
ance and control. The children were trained
in habits of usefulness. They rose between
four and five, had early prayers and breakfast.
School, housework, and recreation occupied the
day, and by eight at night, after prayers, they
went to bed.

Our gentle heroine had great need, she said,
of wisdom and patience, as may well be con-
ceived. The novel enterprise met with much
criticism and opposition. On Sunday evenings
a religious service for the neighbors was held
in the house, and sometimes ‘‘ when the nights
were dark a mob used to collect at the gate and
throw dirt at the people as they went out; and
when they were gone the mob used to come
into the yard and, putting their faces to a win-
dow which had no shutters, roar and howl like
wild beasts.”

One night ‘‘four shabby-looking men with
great sticks in their hands,” the ringleaders of
a mob, forced their way into the kitchen, but
Miss Bosanquet explained the Methodist ‘‘ Rules
of Society’ to them, andasked if they would ac-
cept copies. Subdued by her womanly win-
someness and by the unexpected request, ‘‘ they
received them with a respectful bow and went
out.”

This was a truly remarkable work for a young
184
JOHN FLETCHER AND Mary BosanqueTt

lady of twenty-three to carry on, but she de-
tived much help from her friend, Mrs. Ryan,
who had previously had valuable experience as
the head of the domestic department of Wesley's
Woodhouse Grove School.

At times the expenses of the establishment
exceeded its income, but in answer to prayer
help always came when most needed, often from
anonymous sources. A wealthy Methodist lady,
a Miss Lewen, came to live in the family, where,
after a time, she became ill. By her will she
made provision for the bequest of two thousand
pounds tothe orphanage. But Miss Bosanquet,
fearing that God’s cause might be reproached
thereby, prevailed on her to let it be burned, for
‘what is two thousand pounds,” she exclaimed,
‘‘or two hundred thousand pounds, compared to
the honor of my God?”” When Miss Lewen was
dying she called for pen and paper, saying, ‘‘I
cannot die easy unless I write something of my
mind concerning Sister Bosanquet having the
two thousand pounds,” and renewed the be-
quest. But the money was never claimed, that
the cause of God might be above reproach.

Shortly after this both Miss Bosanquet’s par-
ents died. She had the privilege of alleviating
their last illness by her filial ministrations. She
received from them many marks of affection,

and on their death found her fortune largely
185
MaKERS OF METHODISM

increased. But the expenses of her growing
household more than kept pace with her increase
of income.

The orphan institution was now removed to
Cross Hall, in Yorkshire, where a large farm
was secured for it. Miss Bosanquet was now
employed, with her characteristic energy, in
building, farming, malting, and other opera-
tions, in order to meet the growing expenses of
the institution. The religious services were
continued as at Laytonstone, and worshipers
from far and near flocked to the meetings so
numerously that there was not room for their
accommodation. Miss Bosanquet, therefore,
established similar services at convenient places
throughout the country. In 1770 Wesley vis-
ited the institution, and records in his Journal
that ‘‘it is a pattern and a general blessing to
the country.”

A gentleman of wealth and of religious char-
acter, struck with admiration of her person and
disposition, asked Miss Bosanquet’s hand in
marriage. ‘‘Though I had a grateful love
toward him,” she writes, ‘‘I could not find that
satisfying affection which flows from perfect
confidence, and which is the very spirit and
soul of marriage.” She therefore declined to
give her hand where she could not freely and

fully give her heart. She accepted a life of toil
186
JOHN FLETCHER AND MARY BOSANQUET

and anxiety rather than one of luxury and
ease, at what she conceived to be the call of
duty.

Notwithstanding the utmost economy, the
financial condition of the institution became
greatly embarrassed. Although ‘the strictest
account was made of every grain of corn, pint
of milk, or pound of butter, the farm did not
pay its way.” Miss Bosanquet was greatly per-
plexed. She wrote, ‘‘I am a woman of a sor-
rowful spirit.” She resolved to sell the estab-
lishment and live on twenty pounds a year till
she could pay her debts.

She felt increasingly laid upon her heart the
burden of souls. On account of her health she
went to Horrowgate to drink the waters. While
stopping at an inn the lodgers on Sunday re-
quested her to address them in the ‘‘ great ball-
room.” ‘‘ This was a trial, indeed,” she writes.
‘Yet, I considered, I shall see these people no
more till I see them at the judgment seat of
Christ; and shall it then be said of me, ‘ You
might that day have warned us, but you would
not?’’’ She therefore consented to the request,
and had much comfort and ‘‘ some fruit” of her
labors.

Similar invitations were now frequently urged
upon her. She dared not refuse them. On one

occasion she rode twenty miles over the York-
187
MAKERS OF METHODISM

shire moors to address a meeting in the absence
of the regular preacher. To her dismay she
found two or three thousand persons assembled.
The multitude filled a spacious quarry, from
the edge of which she addressed them. The
people seemed as if they could never have
enough, and said, ‘‘ When will you come again?”

This remarkable woman seems to have pos-
sessed singular ability for addressing an audi-
ence. ‘‘Her manner of speaking,” writes Wes-
ley, ‘‘is smooth, easy, and natural. Her words
are as a fire, conveying both light and heat to the
hearts of all that hear her.” But her womanly
sensitiveness shrank from the task. Of one
occasion she writes: ‘‘All the day I kept plead-
ing before the Lord, mostly in these words of
Solomon, ‘ Ah, Lord, how shall I, who am but
a child, go in and out before this, thy chosen
people?’”

Mary Bosanquet was now to receive a new de-
velopment of hercharacter and a great increase
of her joys. A kindred spirit, in every way
worthy of her love, was to win her hand and
heart. Rarely, if ever, have two more saintly
souls been united in Christian wedlock than John
Fletcher and Mary Bosanquet. On Fletcher's
return from the Continent in 1781 he made the
long-cherished object of his affection an offer of

his hand. It was accepted, and at the mature
188
JouN FLETCHER AND Mary BOSANQUET

age of fifty-two and forty-two respectively this
long-waiting bridegroom and bride kept their
honeymoon. In her devout thanksgiving the
loving wife exclaims, ‘‘ My cup runneth over.”
So well suited to each other were these pious
souls that John Wesley was unwilling that they
should have married otherwise than as they did.

‘The wealth of the bride was now at least no
barrier to the long-delayed union. To pay her
debts all her furniture, except a few trifles, had
to be sold. ‘‘ Deal would do for me,” she
writes, ‘(as well as mahogany. I felt some at-
tachment to my neat furniture; but love to the
order of God made me take the spoiling of
them very cheerfully.” <‘‘I know no want but
that of more grace,” she adds. ‘‘ My husband
loves me as Christ loved the Church.” ‘: My
wife,’ writes Fletcher, ‘‘is far better to me
than the Church to Christ.”

The following is Dr. Stevens’s account of the
married life of the generous-hearted John
Fletcher:

‘His charities to the poor continued to ex-
haust his income to the last. His wife, equally
liberal, assures us that if he could find a hand-
ful of small silver when he was going out to
see the sick he would express as much pleasure
over it as a miser would in discovering a bag of

hidden treasure. He was hardly able to relish
13 189
MAKERS OF METHODISM

his dinner if some sick neighbors had not a
part of it. On Sundays he provided for num-
bers of people who came from a distance to
attend his ministrations; and his house, as well
as his church, was devoted to their convenience.

‘Being called upon by a poor man who feared
God, but who was reduced to great difficulties,
he took down all the pewter from the kitchen
shelves, saying, ‘ This will help you, and I can
do without it; a wooden trencher will serve me
just as well.’ During epidemic and contagious
diseases, when others fled from the sick and
dying, he flew to them, offering his services to
watch them by night as well as by day.”

The happy union of these twin souls was
destined to be of short duration. Four short
years passed away in labors more abundant for
the glory of God. The zealous pastor estab-
lished a day school and a Sunday school, and
soon had three hundred children under religious
instruction. The parish became a proverb for
its piety, and the saintly influence which came
from its humble vicarage was widely felt in
quickening the spiritual life of the neighboring
community.

But this blessed toil, for one of its laborers at
least, was soon to cease. The health of Fletcher,
long infirm, broke down. Yet, despite remon-

strance, he continued his labors to the last, and
190
JOUN FLETCHER AND MARY BOSANQUET

died like a hero, at his post. On the last day
of his public ministry he conducted a commun-
ion service of four hours’ length. A divine
unction rested upon the assembly. His wife
intreated the dying man to desist, but he
seemed to know it was the last time, and per-
sisted in preaching and prayer. For several
days he suffered much, but with continual
praise upon his lips. ‘‘God is love! Shout!
Shout aloud! I wanta gust of praise to go to the
ends of the earth!” cried the dying man. When
no longer able to speak he repeatedly, by signs
and gestures, bore witness to his joy in the
Lord. He died in 1785, in the fifty-sixth year
of his age.

‘Many excellent men,” said Wesley, ‘‘ have
I known, holy in heart and hfe, within four-
score years; 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 of eternity.”

In the first outburst of her sorrow the be-
reaved widow was almost inconsolable. ‘‘ The
sun of my earthly joys forever set,’”’ she writes;
‘«clouds and darkness surround both body and
soul.”

But faith rose triumphant over her fears, and
IgI
MAKERS OF METHODISM

for thirty years she continued to live her saintly
life and maintain the influence of her noble
husband. Her home at Madeley became a
sanctuary to the poor, to devout women, and to
the Methodist itinerants. It became, also, an
important center of religious influence. In her
own house and in the neighboring hamlets the
Scripture expositions of this ‘‘ widow indeed”
were accompanied by striking results. The
anniversaries of her marriage and of her hus-
band’s death were commemorated by holy
excrcises. On one of these occasions in loving
remembrance she writes thus: ‘‘ Twenty-eight
years this day, and at this hour, I gave my
hand and heart to Jean Guillaume de la
Flechtre—a profitable and blessed period of
my life! I feel at this moment a more tender
affection toward him than I did at that time,
and by faith I now join my hands afresh with
his.”

Her labors were extremely exhausting, yet
she sustained them as long as she had any
strength. ‘I am very weak,” she writes,
‘‘and yet am oft five times in a week able to be
at my meetings, and I have strength to speak
so that all may hear, and the Lord is very
present with us.” In her seventy-sixth year,
and a few weeks before her death, she writes:

‘It is as if every meeting would take away my
192
JOHN FLETCHER AND Mary BOSANQUET

life, but I will speak to them while I have
breath.”

The last entry in her faithfully kept Journal
is an aspiration to depart and be with Christ.
‘‘T seem very near death, but I long to fly into
the arms of my beloved Lord.” Soon after she
entered into her eternal rest. Among her
dying utterances were expressions of trium-

phant confidence: ‘‘ There is my home and por-
tion fair;” ‘* He lifts his hands and shows that I
am graven there.” ‘‘ The Lord bless both thee

and me,” she said to a friend who watched by
her bedside, and insisted on her retiring to
rest. Then, in the solemn silence of midnight,
unattended in her dying hour by earthly min-
istrations, but companied by angelic spirits,
her soul passed away from the travails and
trials of earth to the raptures and triumphs of
heaven.

Her whole life was a precious box of alabaster
broken on the feet of the Lord she loved, the
rich perfume of whose anointing is fragrant
throughout the world to-day. In the profusion
of her beneficence to others she practiced toward
herself a rigorous self-denial. During the last
year of her life her expenditure on her own ap-
parel was less than twenty shillings. The same
year her ‘‘ poor account”’ amounted to over one

hundred and eighty pounds. Her annual per-
193
MAKERS OF METHODISM

sonal expenditure on dress, for many years,
never amounted to five pounds.

At her death, as at that of Dorcas, there was
much weeping and lamentation, not only for the
alms-deeds which she did, but for the loss of her
spiritual ministrations.

For nearly one hundred years the Life and
Journal of this sainted soul has been one of the
classics of Methodist biography. Being dead,
she yet speaks in many lands and in many
tongues. She rests from her labors, and her
works do follow her.

Intrepid and blessed spirit! may kindred zeal
and devotion and impassioned love for souls
never cease from among the women of Metho-
dism till the Church of God, the Lamb’s Wife,
appear adorned as a bride for her husband, for

the eternal blessedness of heaven!
194
METHODISM IN THE NEW WORLD

x

The Beginnings of Methodism in the New World

In the providence of God times and places
far from one another are often linked to-
gether by chains of sequence—by relations of
cause and effect. The vast organization of
Methodism throughout this entire continent, in
this nineteenth century, has a definite relation
to the vaulting ambition and persecuting bigotry
of Louis XIV in the seventeenth century. That
dissolute monarch was not sated with the atroc-
ity and bloodshed caused by his infamous revo-
cation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, whereby
half a million of the best subjects of France be-
came exiles forever and multitudes more be-
came the victims of foulest outrage and wrong.
He also twice ravaged the German Palatinate, a
region now included in Bavaria, Baden, Hesse-
Darmstadt, and Rhenish Prussia. In a few
weeks the consummate tactician, Turenne, over-
ran the country and gave to the flames and sack
and pillage thirty thriving towns.

Unable to maintain his conquests against the
resolute Protestant inhabitants and their allies,

the ‘‘Grand Monarque” gave orders from his
195
MAKERS OF METHODISM

palace of Versailles for the utter devastation of
the country. The inhuman orders were obeyed
with atrocious fidelity. Eighty thousand men,
trained in the art of slaughter, were let loose
upon the hapless country, which they scourged
with fire and sword. Heidelberg, Mannheim,
Spires, Worms, Oppenheim, Bingen, and Baden,
towns and cities of historic fame, with their ven-
erable cathedrals, their stately palaces, and their
homes of industry, together with mauy a hum-
ble hamlet and solitary farmstead, were given
to the flames. In the bleak and bitter winter
weather a hundred thousand houseless peas-
ants—gray-haired sires, mothers, and helpless
children—wandered about in abject misery.*
Thousands of these wretched people took
refuge within the lines of the English general,
Marlborough, and sought the shelter of the
British flag. More than six thousand came to
London, reduced from affluence to poverty, and

 

*“ The French commander announced to nearly one half million of human
beings that he granted them three days of grace, and that within that time they
must shift for themselves. Soon the roads and fields, which then lay deep in
snow, were blackened by innumerable men, women, and children flying from
their homes, Many died of cold and hunger, but enough survived to fill the
streets of all the cities of Europe with lean and squalid beggars, who had once
been thriving farmers andshopkeepers."’ The Elector Philip, looking from the
walls of Mannheim, counted in one day no less than twenty-three towns and vil-
lages in flames. In Spires the brutal soldiery, as though to express their
contempt for things most sacred, broke open the imperial vaults and scattered
the ashes of the emperors. The whole valley of the Rhine, on both its banks,
from Drachenfels to Philippsberg, was made the prey of the demon of rapine and
destruction,

196
METHODISM IN THE NEW WORLD

were fed by public charity. Nearly three thou-
sand were sent to the American colonies, and
formed a valuable addition to the population of
New York, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.

A number, and with these we are at present
more particularly interested, immigrated, under
the auspices of the British government, to Ire-
land, and settled in the County of Limerick,
near Rathkeale. In acontemporary list of these
‘(Trish Palatines’’ occur the names, which after-
ward became so familiar in the United States
and Canada, of Embury, Heck, Ruckle, Sweitzer,
and others.

In the good Protestant soil of those hearts
providentially prepared for the reception of the
Gospel the seed of Methodism was early sown.
Wesley’s itinerant ‘‘ helpers” penetrated to their
humble hamlets, and these poor refugees re-
ceived the word with gladness. When John
Wesley, in 1758, passed through Ireland,
preaching day and night, he records that such a
settlement could hardly elsewhere be found in
either Ireland or England. The Palatines had
erected a large chapel. ‘‘ There was no curs-
ing or swearing, no Sabbath-breaking, no drunk-
enness, no alehouse among them.”

They were a serious-thinking people, and
their diligence had turned all their land into a

garden. ‘‘ How will these poor foreigners,” he
197
MAKERS OF METHODISM

exclaims, ‘‘rise up in the day of judgment
against those that are round about them!”

In this remarkable community was born, in
the year 1734, the child destined to be the Mother
of Methodism in the New World. The family
seem to have been of respectable degree, and
gave the name Ruckle Hill to the place of their
residence in Balligarrene. Barbara Ruckle was
nurtured in the fear of the Lord and in the
practice of piety. She grew to womanhood fair
in person, and adorned especially with those
spiritual graces which constitute the truest
beauty of character. In her eighteenth year
she gave herself for life to the Church of her
fathers and formally took upon her the vows of
the Lord.

‘“From the beginning of her Christian life,”
records her biographer, ‘(her piety was of the
purest and profoundest character. The Wes-
leyan doctrine of the witness of the Spirit was
the inward personal test of piety among the
Methodists of that day; and it was the daily
criterion of the spiritual life of Barbara Heck.
When, in extreme age, she was about to close
her life-pilgrimage in the remote wilds of Can-
ada, after assisting in the foundation of her
Church in that province, as well as in the United
States, she could say that she had never lost the

evidence of her acceptance with God for twenty-
198
METHODISM IN THE NEW WORLD

four hours together from the day of her conver-

sion.”
In 1760, in the twenty-sixth year of her age,
she was united in Christian wedlock to Paul

 

BARBARA HECK.

Heck, who is described as a devout member of
the Teutonic community. Ireland then had
scarce begtin to send forth the swarms of her

children who afterward swelled the population
199
MAKERS OF METHODISM

of the New World. Only her more adventur-
ous spirits would brave the perils of the stormy
deep and of the untried lands beyond the sea.
It is therefore an indication of the energy of
character of those Irish Palatines that about this
time a little company of them resolved to try
their fortunes on the continent of America.
‘(On a spring morning of 1760,’ writes one
who was familiar with the local history of the
Palatines, ‘‘a group of emigrants might have
been seen at the customhouse quay, Limerick,
preparing to embark for America. They were
accompanied to the vessel's side by crowds of
companions and friends, some of whom had come
sixteen miles to say ‘farewell.’ One of those
about to leave—a young man with a thoughtful
look and resolute bearing—is evidently leader of
the party. He had been one of the first fruits
of his countrymen to Christ, the leader of the
infant Church, and in their humble chapel had
often ministered to them the word of life.
‘‘And now the last prayer is offered; they
embrace each other; the vessel begins to move.
As she recedes uplifted hands and uplifted
hearts attest what all felt. And none of all
that vast multitude felt more, probably, than
that young man. His name was Philip Embury.
His party consisted of his wife, Mary Sweitzer

(remarkable for her personal beauty, and re-
200
METHODISM IN THE NEW WORLD

cently married, at the early age of sixteen, to
her noble husband), his two brothers and their
families, Paul Heck and Barbara his wife, and
others. Who among the crowd that saw them
leave could have thought that two of the little
band were destined, in the providence of God,
to influence for good countless myriads, and
that their names should live long as the sun and
moon endure? Yet so it was. That vessel
contained Philip Embury, the first class leader
and local preacher of Methodism on the Ameri-
can continent, and Barbara Heck, ‘a mother in
Israel,’ one of its first members, the germ from
which, in the good providence of God, has
sprung the Methodist Church of the United
States [and Canada], a Church which has now
under its influence about seven millions [now
ten, at least] of the germinant mind of that new
and teeming atmosphere!”

The sailing of the little vessel was all un-
heeded by the great world, which would have
recked little had it foundered in the deep. But
that frail bark was freighted with the seed of a
glorious harvest which was destined to fill the
whole land, the fruit whereof should shake like
Lebanon. Those earnest souls, in the flush of
youth and hope and love, carried with them the
immortal leaven which was to leaven with its

spiritual life a whole continent.
201
MAKERS OF METHODISM

After a weary voyage of many weeks the ‘‘des-
tined vessel, richly freighted,” safely reached
New York on the roth of August,1760. Amid the
disappointments of hope deferred and the novel
temptations by which they were surrounded,
deprived, too, of the spiritual ministrations with
which they had been favored in the old home,
these humble Palatines appear to have sunk into
religious apathy and despondency. Like the
exiles of Babylon, they seemed to say, ‘‘ How
shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”’
Embury, for a time, lost his zeal, and, constitu-
tionally diffident, shrank from the responsibility
of religious leadership. While he justly ranks
as the founder of American Methodism, Bar-
bara Heck, as Dr. Stevens well remarks, may
even take precedence over him as its foundress.
She nourished, during all this time, her reli-
gious life by communion with God and by the
devout reading of her old German Bible.

Five years later other Palatines, some of them
relatives or old friends of the Emburys and
Hecks, arrived at New York. Few of these
were Wesleyans, and some made no profession
of religion whatever. In the renewal of social
intercourse between the old and new arrivals a
game of cards was introduced. There is no
evidence that any of the Wesleyans took part in

this worldly amusement. But Barbara Heck
202
METHODISM IN THE New Wor.LD

felt that the time had come to speak out in
earnest remonstrance against the spiritual de-
clension of which she regarded this occupation
as the evidence. In the spirit of an ancient
prophetess she seized the cards and threw them
into the fire, and solemnly warned the players
of their danger and their duty.

Under a divine impulse she went straightway
to the house of her cousin, Philip Embury, and
appealed to him to be no longer silent, ‘‘en-
treating him with tears.” With a keen sense
of the spiritual danger of the little flock she
exclaimed, ‘‘ You must preach to us or we shall
all go to hell together, and God will require our
blood at your hands.” ‘‘I cannot preach, for I
have neither house nor congregation,” he re-
pled. Nevertheless, at her earnest adjuration
he consented to preach in ‘‘his own hired house,”
and this mother in Israel sallied forth and col-
lected four persons, who constituted his first
audience. Its composition was typical of the
diverse classes which the vast organization of
which it was the germ was to embrace.

«Small as it was,” says Dr. Stevens, ‘‘ it in-
cluded white and black, bond and free; while
it was also an example of that lay ministration
of religion which has extended the denomina-
tion in all quarters of the world, and of that

agency of woman to which an inestimable pro-
203
MAKERS OF METHODISM

portion of the vitality and power of the Church
is attributable. The name of Barbara Heck is
first on the list; with her was her husband, Paul
Heck; beside him sat John Lawrence, his‘ hired
man,’ and by her side an African servant, called
‘Betty.’ Thus Methodism began its ministra-
tion among the poor and lowly, destined within
a century to cover with its agencies a vast con-
tinent, and to establish its missions in every
quarter of the globe.”

At the close of the first Methodist sermon
ever preached in America Philip Embury or-
ganized his congregation into a class, which he
continued to meet from week to week. The
little company continued to increase, and soon
grew too large for Philip Embury’s house. They
hired a more commodious room, which was im-
mediately crowded. ‘‘No small excitement,”’
says Dr. Stevens, ‘‘ began quickly to prevail in
the city on account of these meetings.” Philip
Embury, toiling all the week for the bread that
perisheth, continued from Sabbath to Sabbath to
break unto the people the bread of life. As in
the case of the great Preacher, ‘*‘ the common
people heard him gladly.” He was one of them-
selves, and spoke to them of common needs and
of a common Saviour, and their hearts responded
warmly to his words.

One day the humble assembly was a good
204
METHODISM IN THE NEW WORLD

deal startled by the appearance among them of
a military officer with scarlet coat, epaulets, and
sword. The first impression was that he had
come in the king’s name to prohibit their meet-
ings. They were soon agreeably undeceived.

  
  

      
  

pee
Nh Ki

CAPTAIN WEBB.

In the good and brave Captain Webb they found
a firm friend and fellow-laborer in the Lord. He
was one of Wesley’s local preachers who, sent
with his regiment to America, found out the
New York Methodists and gladly cast in his lot

with them. Hesoon took his stand at Embury’s
14 205
MAKERS OF METHODISM

preaching desk, ‘‘ with his sword on it by the
side of the open Bible,” and declared to the peo-
ple the word of life. The preaching of the
soldier-saint roused the whole city and promoted
at once the social prestige ‘and religious prosper-
ity of the humble church. For the ten years
that he continued in America he was the chief
founder of Methodism on the continent, preach-
ing everywhere among the seaboard towns and
villages. ‘‘The old soldier,” said President John
Adams, ‘‘ was one of the most eloquent men I
ever heard.”” He had the honor of introducing
Methodism into the Quaker City, where to-day
it is so powerful, as well as of planting it in many
of the towns of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and
Long Island.

In 1767 the famous ‘‘ Rigging Loft,” in Wil-
liam Street, was hired for the growing New York
congregation; but ‘‘it could not,” says a con-
temporary writer, ‘‘ contain half the people who
desired to hear the word of the Lord.” The
necessity for a larger place of worship became
imperative, but where could this humble com-
munity obtain the means for its erection ? Bar-
bara Heck, full of faith, made it a subject of
prayer, and received in her soul, with inexpress-
ible assurance, the answer, ‘‘I, the Lord, will
do it.” She proposed an economical plan for

the erection of the church, which she believed
206
METHODISM IN THE NEW WORLD

to be a suggestion from God. It was adopted by
the society, and ‘‘the first structure of the de-
nomination in the western hemisphere,” says
Dr. Stevens, ‘‘ was a monumental image of the
humble thought of this devoted woman. Cap-
tain Webb entered heartily into the undertak-
ing. It would probably not have been attempted
without his aid. He subscribed thirty pounds
toward it, the largest sum by one third given by
one person.”

The little Methodist community appealed to
the public for assistance, and the subscription
list is still preserved, representing all classes,
from the mayor of the city down to the African
female servants, designated only by their Chris-
tian names. A site on John Street, now in the
very heart of the business portion of the city,
surrounded by the banks of Wall Street and the
palaces of Broadway, was procured, and a chapel
of stone, faced with blue plaster, was in course
of time erected. As dissenters were not al-
lowed to erect ‘‘ regular churches” in the city,
in order to avoid the penalties of the law it was
provided with a fireplace and chimney. Its in-
terior, though long unfurnished, was described
as ‘‘ very neat and clean, and the floor sprinkled
over with sand as white as snow.” ‘‘Embury,
being a skillful carpenter, wrought diligently

upon this structure; and Barbara Heck, rejoi-
207
MAKERS OF METHODISM

cing in the work of her hands, helped to white-
wash its walls.” ‘‘ There were at first no stairs
or breastwork to the gallery; it was reached by
a rude ladder. The seats on the ground floor
were plain benches without backs. Embury
constructed with his own hands its pulpit; and
on the memorable 30th of October, 1768, mounted
the desk he had made and dedicated the humble
temple to the worship of God. It received the
name of ‘ Wesley Chapel,’ and was the first in
the world to receive that honored name.”

Within two years we read of at least a thou-
sand hearers crowding the chapel and the space
in front. It has been more than once recon-
structed since then, but a portion of the first
building is still visible. A wooden clock, brought
from Ireland by Philip Embury, still marks the
hours of worship. Marble tablets on the walls
commemorate the names and virtues of Barbara
Heck and Embury, and of Asbury and Summer-
field, faithful pastors, whose memory is still
fragrant throughout the continent. This mother
church of American Methodism will long con-
tinue to attract the footsteps of many a devout
pilgrim to the birthplace of the Church of our
fathers and of his own religious fellowship.

It is a somewhat remarkable coincidence that
shortly after Embury had introduced Methodism

into New York another Irish local preacher,
208
METHODISM IN THE NEW WORLD

Robert Strawbridge by name, was the means of
its introduction into the province of Maryland.
Like Embury, he preached first in his own house,
and afterward in a humble ‘‘log meeting-
house,” the prototype of thousands such which
were destined to rise as golden candlesticks amid
the moral darkness all over this vast continent.

Methodism having been established by lay
agency in the largest city in the New World, it
was destined to be planted by the same means in
the waste places of the country. John Wesley,
at the solicitation of Captain Webb and other
Methodists in America, had sent from England
as missionaries to carry on the good work begun
in New York, Richard Boardman and Joseph
Pilmoor, the pioneers of an army of twenty thou-
sand Methodist preachers on this continent. To
these Philip Embury readily gave up his pulpit,
and shortly after, in 1770, removed with his
family, together with Paul and Barbara Heck
and other Palatine Methodists, to Salem, Wash-
ington County, New York, near Lake Champlain.

This now flourishing and populous part of the
country was then a wilderness. But under these
changed conditions those godly pioneers ceased
not to prosecute their providential mission—the
founding of Methodism in the New World.
Embury continued his labors as a faithful local

preacher, and soon among the scattered popula-
209
MAKERS OF METHODISM

tion of settlers was formed a ‘‘ class,” the first
within the bounds of the Troy Conference,
which has since multiplied to two hundred and
eighty-eight preachers and forty-nine thousand
members.

Embury seems to have won the confidence
and esteem of his rural neighbors no less for his
practical business efficiency and sound judgment
than for his sterling piety, as we find him offici-
ating as magistrate as well as preacher.

He received, while mowing in his field in the
summer of 1775, so severe an injury that he
died suddenly, at the early age of forty-five.
‘He was,” writes Asbury, who knew him well,
‘‘oreatly beloved and much lamented.” He
was buried, after the manner of the primitive
settlers, on the farm on which he had lived and
labored. ‘‘ After reposing,” writes Dr. Stevens,
‘fifty-seven years in his solitary grave without
a memorial his remains were disinterred with
solemn ceremonies, and borne by a large pro-
cession to the Ashgrove burial ground, where
their resting place is marked by a monument re-
cording that he ‘was the first to set in motion a
train of measures which resulted in the found-
ing of the John Street Church, the cradle of
American Methodism, and the introduction of a
system which has beautified the earth with sal-

vation and increased the joys of heaven.’”
210
METHODISM IN THE NEW WORLD

On the outbreak of the Revolutionary War
many of the loyal Palatines maintained their
allegiance to the old flag by removing to Lower
Canada. Here they remained for ten years,
chiefly in Montreal. In 1785 a number of them
removed to Upper Canada, then newly organ-
ized as a province, and settled in the township of
Augusta, on the river St. Lawrence. Among
these were John Lawrence and Catharine, his
wife, who was the widow of Philip Embury;
Paul and Barbara Heck, and other Palatine
Methodists. True to their providential mission,
they became the founders and pioneers of Meth-
odism in Canada, as they had been in the United
States. A ‘‘class” was forthwith organized, of
which Samuel Embury, walking in the footsteps
of his sainted father, was the first leader. Thus,
six years before the advent into Canada of Wil-
liam Losee, the first regular Methodist preacher
who entered the country, Methodism was already
organized through the energies of those honored
lay agents.

Barbara Heck died at the residence of her son,
Samuel Heck, in 1804, aged seventy years.
“Her death,” writes Dr. Stevens, ‘‘ was befit-
ting her life; her old German Bible, the guide
of her youth in Ireland, her resource during the
falling away of her people in New York, her in-

separable companion in all her wanderings in the
211
MAKERS OF METHODISM

wildernesses of northern New York and Canada,
was her oracle and comfort to the last. She was
found sitting in her chair, dead, with the well-
used and endeared volume open on her lap.
Thus passed away this devoted, obscure, and
unpretentious woman who so faithfully, yet un-
consciously, laid the foundations of one of the
grandest ecclesiastical structures of modern
ages, and whose name shall shine with ever-in-
creasing brightness as long as the sun and moon
endure.”

In the old ‘‘ Blue Church” graveyard, on the
banks of the majestic St. Lawrence, slumbers
the dust of the founders and of many of the pi-
oneers of Methodism in Canada. The spot
takes its name from an ancient church, now de-
molished, which once wore a coat of blue paint.
Thither devout men, amid the tears of neigh-
bors and friends, bore the remains of Paul Heck
and of Barbara his wife. Here, too, slumbers
the dust of the beautiful Catharine Sweitzer,
who in her early youth gave her heart to God
and her hand to Philip Embury, and for love's
sweet sake braved the perils of the stormy deep
and the privations of pioneer life in the New
World. Here sleep, also, till the resurrection
trump awake them, the bodies of several of the
early Palatine Methodists and of many of their

descendants, who, by their patient toil, their
212
METHODISM IN THE NEW WORLD

earnest faith, their fervent zeal, have helped to
lay the foundations of Methodism on this conti-
nent.

As we contemplate the lowly life of this true
mother in Israel, and the marvelous results of
which she was the initiating cause, we cannot
help exclaiming in devout wonder and thanks-
giving, ‘‘ What hath God wrought!” In the
United States and Canada there is at this
moment, as the outgrowth of seed sown in
weakness over a century ago, a great church or-
ganization, like a vast banyan tree, overspread-
ing the continent, beneath whose broad canopy
ten millions of souls, as members or adherents,
enroll themselves by the name of Methodists, and
go in and out and find spiritual pasture. The
solitary testimony of Philip Embury has been
succeeded by that of a great army of twenty
thousand local preachers and nearly as many
ordained ministers. Over two hundred Metho-
dist colleges and academies unite in hallowed
wedlock the principles of sound learning and
vital godliness. Nearly half a hundred news-
papers, magazines, and other periodicals, to-
gether with a whole library of books of
Methodist authorship, scatter broadcast through-
out the land the religious teachings of which
those lowly Palatines were the first representa-

tives in the New World.
213
MAKERS OF METHODISM

The Methodists of the United States worthily
honored the memory of Barbara Heck by the
erection of a memorial building in connection
with the Garrett Biblical Institute, at Evanston,
Ill.—itself the gift of a noble-minded American
woman—to be known forever as Heck Hall.
Thus do two devout women, one the heir of
lowly toil, the other the daughter of luxury and
wealth, join hands across the century, and their
names and virtues are commemorated not by a
costly but useless pillared monument, but by a
‘‘home for the sons of the prophets, the Philip
Emburys of the coming century, while pursuing
their sacred studies.”’

‘‘Barbara Heck,” writes Bishop Fowler in
commemorating this event, ‘‘ put her brave soul
against the rugged possibilities of the future, and
throbbed into existence American Methodism.
The leaven of her grace has leavened a conti-
nent. The seed of her piety has grown into a
tree so immense that a whole flock of common-
wealths come and lodge in the branches thereof,
and its mellow fruits drop into a million homes.
To have planted American Methodism; to have
watered it with holy tears; to have watched and
nourished it with the tender, sleepless love of a
mother and the pious devotion of a saint; to have
called out the first minister, convened the first

congregation, met the first class, and planned
214
METHODISM IN THE NEW WORLD

the first Methodist church edifice, and to have
secured its completion, is to have merited a
monument as enduring as American institu-
tions, and, in the order of Providence, it has re-
ceived a monument which the years cannot
crumble as enduring as the Church of God.
The life work of Barbara Heck find sits counter-
part in the living energies of the Church she
founded.”

Canadian Methodism has not been unmindful
of its obligation to this sainted woman, and is
erecting asa perpetual memorial a Barbara Heck
Woman’s Residence in connection with Victoria

University, Toronto.
215
MAKERS OF METHODISM

XI
Dr. Coke, the Father of Methodist Missions

THE special characteristic of Methodism is its
missionary zeal. It obeys the exhortation of its
founder, to go not only to those who need it, but
to those who need it most. It delights to re-
member the forgotten, to succor the neglected,
to seek out the forsaken. Asif prescient of the
destined universality of the Church which he
planted, John Wesley with prophetic soul ex-
claimed, ‘‘ The world is my parish.”

On many a field of sacred toil have the minis-
ters of the Methodist Church vindicated its dis-
tinction of being preeminently a missionary
Church—amid the cinnamon groves of Ceylon,
in the crowded bazars or tangled jungles of
India, among the teeming populations of China,
in sunny islands of the Southern Seas, in the
Zulu’s hut and the Kaffir’s kraal, and amid the
strongholds of heathen savagery. With a
prouder boast than the Roman poet they may
exclaim, ‘* What region in the worid is not full
of our labor ?’’ In every land beneath the sun
this grand old mother of Churches has her

daughters, fair and flourishing, who rise up and
216
Dr. COKE, FATHER OF METHODIST MISSIONS

call her blessed. The Sabbath chant of her
hymns engirdles the earth with an anthem of
praise, and the sheen of her spires rejoices in the
light of a ceaseless morning.

RS
SS

Ws
SNS

ASSESS
Y SASS
x SSS \

 

THE REV. DR. THOMAS COKE,
Father of Methodist Missions.

To no man does Methodism owe more its mis-
sionary character than to the Rev. Thomas Coke,

D.C.L. This marvelous man, of puny form but
217
MAKERS OF METHODISM

of giant energy, with a burning zeal kindled at
the altar of eternal truth—like the angel of the
Apocalypse, flying abroad under the whole
heaven with the everlasting Gospel—preached
the glad evangel of God's grace in both hemi-
spheres, became the founder of Wesleyan mis-
sions in the East and West Indies, and the first
bishop of the American Methodism—a Church
now boundless as the continent. After crossing
eighteen times the stormy sea he was at last
buried in its depths, whose waters, like his in-
fluence, encompass the world. The study of this
heroic life will be fruitful at once in lessons of
gratitude to God, of inspiration to duty, and of
zeal in the service of the divine Master.

Nestling in the soft valley of the Usk, sur-
rounded by the towering mountains of Wales,
lies the old ecclesiastical borough of Brecon, the
site of an ancient Dominican priory, whose ivy-
mantled walls form one of the most picturesque
ruinsin Britain. In the oak-roofed, time-stained
town hall of the ancient borough, at the middle
of the last century, might have been seen, ar-
rayed in the robes and insignia of office, a worthy
alderman dispensing justice to the rural litigants
of the neighborhood. This was the chief mag-
istrate of Brecon and the father of Thomas
Coke.

The future apostle of Methodism, unlike many
218
Dr. COKE, FATHER OF METHODIST MISSIONS

of its early ministers, was the heir of a large
patrimony. He was born three years before
the middle of the century (1747), and spent his
early years amid the romantic surroundings of
‘‘Usk and Camelot,” the scene of the legendary
exploits of King Arthur and the knights of the
Round Table. In his sixteenth year he was
registered as gentleman-commoner at Jesus Col-
lege, Oxford. Among his college associates
were the future Lord Eldon, Chancellor of Eng-
land, who always retained for him a warm
friendship; William Jones, who became the
first orientalist of his age; Wharton, the his-
torian of British poetry; and the future bishops,
Horne and Kennicott.

The handsome young patrician student was
not proof against the seductions of Oxford so-
ciety. He unhappily fell into evil habits, and
even became infected with the infidel principles
which were then too much in vogue at the uni-
versity. But a divine restraint and guidance
prevented him from forsaking his hereditary
faith and confirmed him in, at least, an intellec-
tual apprehension of the truths of Christianity,
although, as yet, he knew not by experience
their saving power. He completed his college
course with distinction, and shortly after his
coming of age was elected to the chief magis-

tracy of his native town. But, yearning to live
, 219
MAKERS OF METHODISM

alife of Christian service, he entered holy orders
in the humble rank of a village curate. Yet his
heart was ill at ease, for he felt that the Saviour
whom he was called to preach was to himself
unknown.

Still, his moral earnestness awakened much in-
terest in his parish. Hischurch became crowded,
and to accommodate the increased congregation
he erected a gallery at his own expense. Dur-
ing this time he made the acquaintance of
Thomas Maxfield, Wesley's first lay preacher,
and by him was led to more spiritual views of
religion. He became increasingly diligent in
the discharge of parish duty. He met one day
in his pastoral visitation a humble Methodist
farm laborer who, unlettered in the lore of the
schools, was wise in the knowledge of God.
From this rustic teacher the Oxford scholar
gained a clearer acquaintance with the way of
salvation by faith than from the learned divines
and bishops of the first university of Europe.

The zeal of the popular curate soon began to
exceed the bounds of clerical decorum, as re-
garded in the Church established by law. He
preached with increasing fervor, and without
the ‘‘ regulation manuscript.’’ He held special
services out of church hours on Sunday, and on
week evenings, in remote parts of his parish.

He introduced the singing of the soul-stirring
220
Dr. COKE, FATHER OF METHODIST MISSIONS

hymns of Watts and Wesley. He was no longer
the easy-going, card-playing parson of his early
incumbency, but a ‘‘ dangerous fanatic,” right-
eous overmuch, and, in fact, infected with the
pestilent heresy of Methodism, whose Arminian
doctrines of free grace he proclaimed from the
parish pulpit.

The overearnest curate was soon dismissed by
his rector, admonished for his ‘‘irregularities”’
by the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and expelled
from his church. His churchly notions were
still so exalted that, after a long and profitable
correspondence with a dissenting minister, when
invited to a personal interview he would only
consent to its taking place under the neutral
ground of a neighbor's house, his scruples pre-
venting him visiting a dissenter or meeting one
under his own roof. To receive himself the ob-
noxious brand of a Methodist was therefore par-
ticularly distasteful. He had just obtained his
highest academical degree—that of Doctor of
Civil Law. Church preferment was proffered
him by a nobleman of powerful influence. But
the authority of conscience was supreme, and he
faltered not for a moment in his loyalty to the
convictions of his soul. Neither worldly hopes
nor ignoble fears could make him swerve from
what he deemed the path of duty.

A personal interview with John Wesley con-
15 221
MAKERS OF METHODISM

vinced Dr. Coke that for scholarship and saint-
liness the despised Methodists possessed the
very paragon of clergymen. Mr. Wesley thus
records his impressions of the young Doctor of
Law: ‘‘I had much conversation with him, and
aunion then began which, I trust, shall never
end.”

The zealous curate soon experienced the
brunt of persecution. The sentence of his ex-
pulsion from the parish church was abruptly
announced at the close of the morning service
in the presence of the congregation. By a pre-
concerted scheme, as he passed out of the door
the bells rang out a dissonant peal—a sort of
ecclesiastical ‘‘rogue’s march’’—by way of
valediction to the expelled pastor. Cider bar-
rels were broached, and a general rejoicing at
his expulsion took place. To a man of his
keen sensitiveness and churchly sympathies the
indignity must have been poignant in the ex-
treme.

But the expelled pastor could not be restrained
from proclaiming the message of salvation.
The next Sunday he preached in the street near
the church, immediately after the morning serv-
ice, and announced that he would preach again
the following Sunday. He was warned that it
would be at the peril of his life if he did. ‘‘To
render these menaces more significant,” says

222

 
Dr. COKE, FATHER OF METHODIST MISSIONS

his biographer, ‘‘sundry hampers of stones
were brought to the spot, like a park of artillery
drawn up on a field marked out for battle.”

But the little doctor, with that heroic courage
which characterized him to the end of his life,
was not to be daunted by brute force. He was
sustained, also, by the presence of friends, who
stood by him in this hour of peril. Among
these were a Miss Edmunds and her brother,
whose hearts had been touched by the earnest
preaching of the persecuted pastor. The brave
girl stood on one side of him and the brother
on the other. Their undaunted bearing cowed
the craven spirits of the mob, who shrank from
their intended assault and possible murder;
and, like Paul before Felix, the feeble unarmed
man spoke words of power which made his per-
secutors tremble.

Notwithstanding this rude initiation into his
life work, Dr. Coke not for a moment hesitated
in his purpose. He resolved to cast in his lot
with the despised and persecuted Methodists
and to espouse the toils and hardships of an
itinerant preacher. He therefore, in 1777,
made application to Mr. Wesley for admission
to the Conference. That judicious man did not
at once grant his request, but gave him time for
consideration, while he made him the compan-

ion of his journeys and the sharer of his labors.
223
MAKERS OF METHODISM

Dr. Coke visited the Bristol Conference, and
his desire to be numbered with those godly
men in the work of spreading ‘‘ scriptural holi-
ness” throughout the land became more in-
tense. Wesley yielded to his wish, and wrote
in his Journal: ‘‘I went to Taunton with Dr.
Coke, who has bidden adieu to his honorable
name and determined to cast in his lot with
us.”

He was soon preaching in the old Foundry,
London, at Seven Dials, and to immense multi-
tudes of eager listeners in the public squares.
Providence was opening for him a wider career
than addressing a few rustics in an obscure
hamlet. He was soon to becomea mighty mis-
sionary organizer, whose influence was to be
felt on earth’s remotest shores and to the end of
time.

Wesley was now bowed beneath the weight
of eighty years. The care of all the churches
and his vast correspondence was a burden which
he gladly shared with this energetic son in the
Gospel, now in the vigor of his thirtieth year.
He used to say that Dr. Coke was his right hand.

The zealous preaching of the young evangel-
ist often provoked the attacks of mobs. As he
stood in the public square of Ramsbury, Wilt-
shire, he was assailed with sticks and stones,

and his gown torn to shreds. The vicar of the
224
Dr. COKE, FATHER OF METHODIST MISSIONS

parish, who headed the riot, bethought him of
a more ingenious expedient. ‘‘ Bring out the
fire engines!” he shouted; and the preacher and
congregation were soon dispersed by a few
volleys of ‘liquid artillery.” It was noticed, as
a remarkable coincidence, that within a fort-
night that very engine proved powerless to sup-
press a fire which destroyed a great part of the
village.

In the course of his itinerations Dr. Coke re-
visited his former parish, from which he had
been heartlessly expelled. The simple rustics
found that they had lost their best friend, and
welcomed him back with joy. The bells that
rang him out chimed merrily at his return. He
preached to two thousand people, who flocked
to hear him from all the neighboring villages,
and wept over them as the Saviour wept over
Jerusalem. From that day the despised Meth-
odists had a foothold in the parish, and soon
after the doctor had the pleasure of building a
Methodist chapel where he had been cast out of
the Established Church.

In his somewhat impulsive zeal Dr. Coke ar-
raigned Joseph Benson and Samuel Bradburn,
first by correspondence and then before the Con-
ference, fora presumed tinge of Arian heresy.
Their orthodoxy being vindicated, the doctor

asked permission to beg pardon publicly for his
225
MAKERS OF METHODISM

offense, and thus make public amends for the
wrong he had done.

In the celebrated Deed of Declaration Mr.
Wesley vested in the ‘‘ Legal Hundred” all the
authority of the Connection. Dr. Coke was ac-
cused of influencing the choice of this ‘‘ centu-
rion band.” Mr. Wesley, however, completely
exculpated him by the laconic defense, ‘‘ Von
vult, non potuzt—he would not if he could, he
could not if he would’’—and assumed the per-
sonal responsibility of the choice.

Dr. Coke was soon to enter on what might be
called his foreign missionary work. On the sec-
ond day of September, 1784, John Wesley, feel-
ing himself providentially called of God thereto,
solemnly set apart by imposition of hands Dr.
Thomas Coke to be superintendent of the Meth-
odist societies in America. Into the controversy
to which that act gave rise we shall not enter.
In our sketch of Francis Asbury we have given
Mr. Wesley’s own account of the transaction.
Suffice it to say that the extraordinary develop-
ment of American Methodism, under episcopal
jurisdiction, seems a providential vindication of
his procedure.

In three weeks Coke, with his companions,
Whatcoat and Vesey, was on his way to Amer-
ica. The voyage was stormy and tedious, but
he redeemed the time by study. He refreshed

226
Dr. COKE, FATHER OF METHODIST MISSIONS

his classic lore by reading Virgil in a little nook
between decks, and remarks in his Journal, ‘‘I
can say in a much better sense than he—

‘Deus nobis haec otia fecit,
Namque erit ille mihi semper Deus.’ ” *

He labored zealously for the conversion of the
sailors on shipboard, and believed that God had
given him at least one soul as his reward.

‘‘T want,” he wrote, ‘‘the wings of an eagle
and the voice of a trumpet, that I may proclaim
the Gospel through the-east and the west, the
north and the south ’’—a prophecy of his future
life work.

He forthwith began ranging through the con-
tinent from Massachusetts to Georgia, a true
bishop of souls, feeding the flock scattered
through a primeval wilderness. Not unfre-
quently was he exposed to the perils of fording
swollen rivers or crossing rugged mountains.
Some of his escapes from danger were very nar-
row. He met with prejudice and opposition in
the Western wilds as well asin an English parish,
and records being excluded from a dilapidated
church to which, nevertheless, cattle and hogs
had free access.

He preferred the rugged grandeur of the Blue

 

* “ God has provided for us these hours of retirement, and he shall bemy God

forever.”
227
MAKERS OF METHODISM

Ridge Mountains to any part of America; it was
so much like his native Wales. He bore his
testimony boldly against the sin of slavery, and
provoked thereby much persecution. One lady
offeredamob £50 if they ‘‘ would give the little
doctor a hundred lashes.” Many emancipated
their slaves, but others became more virulent in
their opposition. In company with Asbury he
visited General Washington at Mount Vernon,
to seek his influence in favor of Negro emanci-
pation. But their Master's business requiring
haste, they could not accept an invitation to
lodge under the presidential roof. During this
seven-months’ visit Dr. Coke greatly consoli-
dated and strengthened American Methodism
and laid the foundation of Cokesbury College,
the pioneer of its grand educational system.

The importance of foreign missions was not
then felt in the Churches of Christendom. When
Carey, at ameeting of ministers, urged the duty
of giving the Gospel to the heathen, the presi-
dent exclaimed, ‘‘Sit down, young man; sit
down. When God pleases to convert the heathen
he will do it without your aid or mine.”

But already Coke was meditating the vast mis-
sionary enterprises which are the glory of the
Methodist Church. He opened a correspondence
with India and America, and visited the Channel
Islands as a key to missionary operations in

22
Dr. COKE, FATHER OF METHODIST MISSIONS

France. The first field forthe extension of the
Gospel, however, that seemed indicated by
Providence was Newfoundland, Nova Scotia,
and Canada. ‘hither, in 1768, Dr. Coke and
three fellow-preachers were sent by the English
Conference.

The voyage lasted thirteen weeks, and wasal-
most one continued tempest. The sails were
rent, the timbers strained, and, half a wreck,
the vessel sprung a leak, and, falling on her
beam ends, threatened instant death to all on
board. The superstitious captain, attributing
his disasters to the presence of the blackcoats,
exclaimed, ‘‘ Thereisa Jonahon board; a Jonah
on board!” Rushing to Dr. Coke’s cabin, he
threw into the sea his books and papers, and,
seizing the diminutive doctor, threatened to
throw him after them if he were caught praying
again. The passengers were put on short ra-
tions, and, worst of all, the doctor thought, the
supply of candles gave out, so that his hours of
study were curtailed. He solaced himself, tillhe
lost his books, with reading French, Virgil, and
‘‘every day a canto of the English Virgil,
Spenser.” ‘‘ With such company,” he contin-
ues, ‘‘I could live comfortably in a tub.”

The project of reaching Halifax had to be
abandoned, and running before the storm, they

made, on Christmas Day, the port of Antigua,
229
MAKERS OF METHODISM

in the West Indies. It was, indeed, a happy
day for the sable myriads of those islands, for it
brought them a glad evangel of redemption—of
peace on earth and good will to men. As Dr.
Coke walked up the street of the town he met a
ship carpenter and local preacher, John Baxter
by name, who had under his care a Methodist
society of nearly two thousand souls, all blacks
but ten.

How came this native church in this far-off
tropic isle ? Twenty-eight years before an An-
tigua planter, Nathaniel Gilbert, heard John
Wesley preach at Wandsworth, in England.
The good seed took root in his heart, and he
brought the precious germs to his island home,
where they became the source of West India
Methodism. This, in turn, was one of the chief
means of Negro emancipation and the beginning
of the great movement of African evangeliza-
tion. Onthe death of Nathaniel Gilbert a pious
shipwright took charge of the native church,
which eight years later was found so flourishing.

Dr. Coke ranged from island to island, sow-
ing the seed of the kingdom in the good ground
of those faithful African hearts. On every side
he found evidence of the quickening power of
the leaven of Methodism conveyed by strange
means to those scattered islands—by converted

soldiers or sailors, by pious freed Negroes, and at
230
Dr. COKE, FATHER OF METHODIST MISSIONS

St. Eustatius by a fugitive slave, whose minis-
try wasa marvelof spiritual success. Under the
preaching of the black apostle many of his
hearers fell down, like dead men, to the earth,
and multitudes were converted from their fetich
worship to an intelligent piety.

The Dutch officials of the island, however,
scourged and imprisoned Black Harry, and
passed an edict inflicting thirty-nine lashes on
any Negro found praying. With a fidelity worthy
of the martyr ages these sable confessors con-
tinued steadfast amid these cruel persecutions.
Dr. Coke subsequently interceded at the court
of Holland for the religious liberty of the blacks,
but, for the time, in vain. Yet he lived to see
St. Eustatius a flourishing Wesleyan mission,
and, ten years after, met Black Harry a freed
and happy man.

Again and again the indefatigable evangelist
revisited those sunny islands, which seem to
have possessed a strange fascination to his soul.
And well they might, for nowhere has mission-
ary success been more glorious. At Barbadoes
an Irish soldier recognized one of the mission-
aries as his old pastor, and, in a transport of de-
light, threw his arms about his neck. At Ja-
maica Dr. Coke received some insults from a
number of drunken ‘‘ gentlemen,” but persisted

in his apostolic labor of preaching the Gospel.
231
MAKERS OF METIIODISM

Persecution here, as elsewhere, fostered the
growth of the Church. The chapel was attacked
by a mob, the Bible hanged to a gibbet, and the
Methodists hooted at by the nickname of ‘hal-
lelujah”” in the street. In Bermuda John
Stephenson, for preaching the Gospel to Negroes,
was imprisoned for six months and fined 450.

Soon the work of evangelization was extended
to Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts, Nevis, the
Bahamas, the Carib Islands, Hayti, and the
Bermudas. Amid privations, pestilence, ship-
wrecks, and sometimes bitter persecution the
missionaries toiled on till a free Christian civili-
zation took the place of slavery, superstition,
cruelty, and barbarism. Asa result of the work
thus inauspiciously begun Methodism now num-
bers in those islands over a score of mission-
aries and over twenty thousand members.

Dr. Coke was in America when he heard of
the death of John Wesley. Overwhelmed with
sorrow, he hastened home toEngland. Hewas
soon associated with Henry Moore in the prepa-
ration of a life of the patriarch of Methodism.
An edition of ten thousand was published, and
in two months cleared a profit of 41,700.

The French Revolution and the fall of the
Bastile inspired a hope that in France the bar-
riers to the Gospel had been broken down. Dr,
Coke and M. De Queteville, a Guernsey Metho-

232
Dr. CoKE, FATHER OF METHODIST MISSIONS

dist, proceeded to Paris to open, if possible, a
mission. In that city of amusements and pleas-
ures, where, as one of its own wits has said,
four fifths of the people die of grief,* they could
only get a congregation of six persons, and were
warned to depart or they would be hanged on a
lamp-post. They felt that the opportunity for
the evangelization of France had not yet come.

Dr. Coke had been requested by the English
Conference to prepare a commentary on the
Holy Scriptures. On his fifth voyage to Amer-
ica he devoted himself with energy to the task.
‘“‘T find a ship a most convenient place for
study,” is his rather exceptional experience,
‘‘although,” he adds, ‘‘it is sometimes a great
exercise for my feet, legs, and arms to keep my-
self steady to write.” Proceeding from New
York to St. Eustatius, in company with the
sainted ‘‘ Bishop” Black, of Nova Scotia, he
found the vessel exceedingly loathsome from the
filthy habits of the crew, yet he was able, he
said, to become a contented Hottentot, and the
consolations of God superabounded.

He found the Methodist missionary in jail for
preaching the Gospel, and Negro women pub-
licly flogged for attending prayer meeting. The
penalty for the second and third offense of

 

*'* Paris, ville d’amusemens, des plaisirs, ol! les quatre cinquiémes des habi-
tans mourent de chagrin.’’"—Chamfort, Caractéres et Anecdotes.

233
MAKERS OF METHODISM

preaching was banishment or death, but the im-
prisoned missionary still preached through his
grated windows to the Negroes without, who
listened with tears flowing down their cheeks.
The doctor might well denounce these cruel
edicts as rivaling those of the pagan emperors
of Rome. He zealously interceded with the
Dutch and English governments for the repeal
of these infamous laws, and eventually with suc-
cess,

In Jamaica he preached the first sermon ever
heard in the town of Falmouth, although it had
for years a parochial clergyman, with a hand-
some stipend. As he declared the necessity of
the new birth a sea captain exclaimed, ‘‘ Sir, if
what you say be true, we must all be damned. I
don’t like your doctrine at all,” and the sermon
was continued amid tumult and confusion.
While on his return to England Coke’s ship was
chased by a French privateer, but was rescued
by the appearance of Lord Hood's fleet.

The publication of Wilberforce’s evidence
concerning the African slave trade was to the
heart of Dr. Coke an apalling revelation of the
horrors of that ‘‘sum of all villanies.” He
therefore, in his yearning pity for the dark con-
tinent of Africa, projected a mission colony to
that unhappy country, then seldom sought but

for purposes of cruelty and crime. ‘The expedi-
234
Dr. COKE, FATHER OF METHODIST MISSIONS

tion sailed for Sierra Leone in 1796, but, al-
though the pioneer of successful missions, it was
itself a failure.

The same year he again embarked to attend
the General Conference at Baltimore. Travel-
ing nowadays has lost much of the adventure and
peril and discomfort it had in the last century.
Dr. Coke describes the ship as a ‘‘ floating hell,”
and his ill-treatment by the captain as too in-
famous to describe. He believed that the tyrant
wished to cause his death out of hatred to Meth-
odism. With a single shirt in his pocket, and
refused the request for a little bread and pork,
although he had paid eighteen guineas for his
passage, Dr. Coke left the vessel in Chesapeake
Bay in a small schooner, on whose bare deck he
slept all night.

With much privation and vexatious delays,
traveling by boat, on horseback, or on foot, he
reached Baltimore just in time for the Confer-
ence. On the way he was joined by a Metho-
dist preacher from beyond the Alleghanies, who
had been lost for sixteen days in crossing the
mountains. His horse had perished, and he
himself had nearly died of hunger. Such were
some of the episodes of the itinerancy a century
ago.

On Coke’s succeeding voyage the vessel was

captured by a French privateer and confiscated,
235
MAKERS OF METHODISM

with all the doctor’s baggage except his private
papers. He was landed at Porto Rico with
scarcely raiment enough for his personal neces-
sities, but escaped the horrors of a French
prison, and at length found his way to Confer-
ence ‘‘on a borrowed horse, with a great boy
riding behind him.”

During the terrible insurrection of 1798 in
Ireland Dr. Coke was in that distracted country,
frequently exposed to personal peril, but provi-
dentially protected. It was a Methodist class
leader in Dublin who gave warning of the out-
break, and thus saved the capital from capture
and pillage by the insurgents. The horrors of
this civil war, for such it was, can never be fully
recorded. A French invasion was invited by
the rebels and attempted under General Hum-
bert. Beacon lights flashed the signal of the
rising from peak to peak. The houses of many
Protestants were burned, their cattle harried,
and multitudes of noncombatant men, women,
and children were cruelly massacred. Bands of
armed ruffians, maddened with whisky and
fanaticism, ravaged the country with fire and
sword. Thirty-seven thousand of the marauders
encamped near Ross, and the next day seven
thousand were slain in a conflict with the king’s
troops.

The Methodists, especially the itinerant
236
Dr. COKE, FATHER OF METHODIST MISSIONS

preachers, were, for their loyalty, particularly
obnoxious to the rebels, and several were cruelly
piked with aggravated barbarity. During this
reign of terror the Irish Conference met, through
the influence of Dr. Coke with the lord lieu-
tenant, inthe city of Dublin. ‘‘O God, shorten
the day of our calamity,” he wrote, ‘‘or no
flesh can be saved.” With the magnanimity of
a Gospel revenge that very Conference set apart
Charles Graham and James McQuigg as Irish
evangelists, who, subsequently joined by Gideon
Ouseley, preached and prayed and sang the Gos-
pel in the Irish tongue into the hearts of thou-
sands of their fellow-countrymen. Dr. Coke it
was who proposed the measure, pledged its pe-
cuniary support, and obtained for the mission-
aries the protection of the military authorities.

Soon after he organized the missions among
his Welsh fellow-countrymen, and had the hap-
piness of seeing multitudes thereby brought to
a knowledge of the truth. Two years later he
formed a plan for the home missions which have
carried Methodism to the remotest hamlets of
the island, and eight men were designated to
destitute parts of England unreached by the
regular circuits.

Two continents were now contending in
friendly rivalry for the services of this modern

apostle. Alternately president of the English
16 237
MAKERS OF METHODISM

and of the American Conference, his presence
seemed so manifestly needed in both countries
that he was continually crossing the ocean on
his missionary voyages, as if either hemisphere
were too narrow for his energies. At last the
American General Conference of 1800 yielded
to the request of the British Conference to allow
Dr. Coke to remain in England.

‘«We have, in compliance with your request,”
it wrote, ‘‘lent the doctor to you for a season,
to return to us as soon as he conveniently can,
but at furthest by the meeting of the next
General Conference.’ Only once more was he
permitted to visit his American brethren, to
whom he was endeared by most sacred ties,
and who mourned his death as that of the
‘‘oreatest man of the eighteenth century.”’

Amid the many wanderings of his active hfe
Dr. Coke found leisure for much literary work,
as even the busiest may do if he will only im-
prove his spare hours—the hore subsecive which
many think not worth saving. Among his
useful writings are his History of the IVest Indies,
in three volumes, octavo; five volumes of records
of his missionary journeys; a history of philos-
ophy, and numerous occasional pamphlets, ser-
mons, and the like.

His great work, however, was his Commentary

on the Scriptures, begun by request of the British
238
Dr. Coke, FATHER OF METHODIST MISSIONS

Conference in 1798, and finished, after nine
years’ labor, in 1807. It reached the somewhat
portentous size of six quarto volumes, splendidly
printed on the University Press. The book,
however, was not a success. It was probably
too costly for the times, and was superseded by
the more popular work of Dr. Adam Clarke.
Disappointed at its failure, he offered the entire
edition, worth at trade price 410,000, to the
Conference for £3,000. This offer was accepted,
and he bade farewell to literature for the more
congenial field of missionary toil.

With zeal redoubled as the years fled by, he
traversed Great Britain from end to end on be-
half of his Irish, Welsh, and home mission en-
terprises. He threw himself with vigor into
the then novel work of promoting Sunday
schools and the temperance reform. The spir-
itual necessities of the soldiers and sailors of
Great Britain—of whose trials and temptations,
virtues and vices, he had seen so much dur-
ing his wanderings—lay like a burden on his
heart.

At length, in 1804, a Methodist missionary
and his wife were sent to the Rock of Gibraltar.
They were well-nigh wrecked in the Bay of
Biscay and driven tothe Barbary coast. Reach-
ing at last their destination, it yielded them only

the asylum of a grave; yellow fever wasted the
239
MAKERS OF METHODISM

little community, and the missionary and his
wife soon fell victims to its power. An infant
daughter survived, who, adopted into the fam-
ily of Dr. Adam Clarke, became the wife of a
Methodist minister and the mother of the dis-
tinguished Dr. James H. Rigg, twice president
of the Wesleyan Conference. But the historic
rock was not abandoned; and a succession of
faithful missionaries have ministered to the
wants, temporal and spiritual, of multitudes of
England’s redcoats quartered at Gibraltar.

The unhappy condition of the French sailors
and soldiers pent up in the prison-ships of the
great naval depots also appealed strongly to that
loving heart whose sympathies were as wide as
the world. In the Medway alone was a prison
population of two thousand, and altogether in
England not less than sixty thousand crowded
into unventilated and often infected ships.
Sometimes the friendless, hopeless, and often
half-naked wretches sought escape from their
despondency by suicide.

The Rev. William Toase, the father of
French Methodist missions, gained admission
to the hulk Glory, and preached to the prisoners
in their own language till forbidden by the
commissary. Dr. Coke thereupon appealed to
the Earl of Liverpool and obtained permission

to have preaching at all the naval stations, with
240
Dr. COKE, FATHER OF METHODIST MISSIONS

characteristic generosity meeting the enlarged
expenditure himself.

Through this exhibition of love to enemies
many French prisoners—some of noble rank—
carried back to their native land not only kindly
recollections of their ‘‘ hereditary foe,” but
Christian fellowship in that kingdom which em-
braces all racesof men. William Toase had also
the honor of planting in France that Methodist
Church which has survived the overthrow of
successive dynasties and is contributing greatly
to the moral regeneration of that lovely land.

At length Dr. Coke was permitted to see the
successful inauguration of an African mission—
the precursor of subsequent moral victories
among the Kaffirs, Hottentots, Fingoes, Bechu-
anas, Zulus, and other tribes of the Dark Conti-
nent. On the abolition of the slave trade Eng-
land established in Sierra Leone the colony of
Freetown as an asylum for stolen Negroes
rescued from recaptured slave ships. Hither,
in 1811, four volunteer missionaries were sent.
Notwithstanding the more than decimation of
the missionary ranks by the deadly climate, the
work has been maintained till in thirty chapels
assemble more than twenty thousand native
Methodists who have abandoned their vile
fetichism for a pure spiritual worship, and five

thousand children crowd the mission schools.
241
MAKERS OF METHODISM

We now approach a romantic episode in the
already venerable missionary’s history. The
flower of love, like the night-blooming cereus,
blossomed late in his life; but its beauty and
fragrance were all the more grateful to his
lonely heart. He was in his fifty-eighth year.
His brow was bronzed by eighteen transatlantic
voyages and by sojourn beneath the tropic sun,
and his once raven hair was silvered by time.
In his busy life he had never found leisure for
courtship and marriage. But now, in its quiet
eventide, he found the solace of communion
with a kindred spirit in the tenderest and most
sacred of earthly relationships.

The growing claims of the vast and increas-
ing missionary enterprises of the Church called
for active efforts for their support. Dr. Coke
not only exhausted his own large patrimony in
their aid, but ‘‘toiled,” says his biographer,
‘‘from day to day like a common mendicant.”
While at Bristol on a begging tour he was in-
troduced to a Methodist lady of large fortune,
who subscribed for his mission two hundred
guineas. The generous gift led to an acquaint-
ance which in time resulted in the union of
their hearts and lives and fortunes and interests
for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
‘Unto thee, O God,” wrote the lady on her

wedding day, ‘‘we give up our whole lives—
242
Dr. CoKE, FATHER OF METHODIST MISSIONS

all we have and all we are—to thee wholly and
entirely.”

But marriage made no change in the soul-
absorbing pursuits of the zealous missionary or-
ganizer. He seemed to feel that the time was
short, and it remained that they that have
wives be as though they had none. He contin-
ued to travel, preach, write, and beg with unin-
termitting energy. His devoted helpmate was
not long permitted to aid with her love, her
sympathy, and her fortune her noble husband.
After six years of married life he was again left
alone in the world.

His heart, sore stricken by her loss, having
tasted the solace of domestic happiness, again
sought an aftermath of joy in a second marriage.
But in a few days from the anniversary of the
wedding day he was again left solitary.

‘‘With the presage,” writes his biographer,
“that these bereavements had been designed
to leave him the more untrammeled for the
tasks that might remain, he dedicated himself
afresh to God alone. Henceforth he would
think, preach, write, labor, and pray more fully
than ever for one object—the extension of
Christ’s kingdom among men.”’

And faithfully he performed his vow. He
was now about to inaugurate his last and great-

est missionary enterprise. For many years the
243
MAKERS OF METHODISM

spiritual destitution of India had lain heavy on
his heart. On the banks of the Indus, where
the foot of an Alexander had faltered, a mer-
chant’s clerk had conquered an empire. With
three thousand troops on the plain of Plassey
Clive had routed an army of sixty thousand,
with the loss of only two and twenty men, and
laid the foundations of Britain’s Indian empire
of two hundred and fifty million souls.

Though open to English commerce, India, by
the decree of the company, was closed to Christ's
Gospel. But India still ‘‘cleaved”’ to his heart ;
he could ‘‘ give up all for India.” Parliament,
wrote Wilberforce, was especially ‘‘set against
granting any countenance to dissenters or Meth-
odists in favor of sending missionaries to India.”
Dr. Coke, therefore, rather than fail in his
long-cherished purpose, was willing to go in
his character a sa clergyman of the Established
Church and as such offered his services.

For this he has been censured, as if self-
seeking and ambitious and disloyal to the
Church in whose service he had spent forty
years of his life. The prudence of his course
may well be questioned. Of a hallowed am-
bition for the salvation of souls he is certainly
gloriously convicted, but of sordid self-seeking
he was absolutely incapable. ‘‘ He wasalready,”’

writes Dr. Stevens, ‘‘ wielding an episcopal
244
Dr. COKE, FATHER OF METHODIST MISSIONS

power compared with which an Indian see
would be insignificant.” Salary he sought not,
only permission to spend and be spent for India.

The proposition, however, was not accepted.
But Dr. Coke’s faith and zeal and courage were
not to be overcome. Ceylon, ‘‘the threshold
before the gate of the East,’’ was more access-
ible than India, and thither he was determined,
by God’s grace, to go. Friends remonstrated
against a man in his sixty-sixth year, worn
with toil and heavy cares, braving the perils of
a long sea voyage and residence in the torrid
zone; but it was in vain.

‘¢T am now dead to Europe,” he wrote, ‘‘ and
alive to India. God himself has said to me,
‘Go to Ceylon,’ I am so fully convinced of the
will of God that methinks I had rather be set
naked on the coast of Ceylon and without a
friend than not go there. I shall bear all my
own expenses, of course,” he adds.

He eagerly began the study of Portuguese,
which was largely spoken in Ceylon; a study
which he subsequently prosecuted on shipboard
to the day of his death. The letter just quoted
was written from Ireland, and he sought first
the sanction of the Irish Conference to his pur-
pose. Revering him as an apostle, and almost
as the father of Irish Methodism, it supported

with enthusiasm his project. Fired by his
245
MAKERS OF METHODISM

example, Gideon Ouseley begged, with tears, to
be allowed to accompany him, but his provi-
dential work was too manifestly at home for
the Conference to grant its permission.

Dr. Coke now sought the sanction of the
English Conference. Unmoved by their fears
for his health, he declared that ‘‘ their consent,
he believed, would add years to his life, while
their refusal would infallibly shorten his days.”
‘« Many rose to oppose it.” We quote the nar-
tative of Dr. Stevens: ‘‘ Benson, with vehe-
mence, said it would ‘ruin Methodism,’ for the
failure of so gigantic a project would seem to
involve the honor of the denomination before
the world.

‘<The debate was adjourned to the next day.
Coke, leaning on the arm of one of his mission-
aries, returned to his lodgings in deep anguish,
the tears flowing down his face in the streets.
He was not at the antebreakfast session the
next day. The missionary hastened to his
chamber and found that he had not been in
bed; his disheveled silvery locks showed that
he had passed the night in deep distress. He
had spent the hours in prayer, prostrate on the
floor. They went to the Conference and Coke
made a thrilling speech. He not only offered
to lay himself on the altar of this great sacrifice,

but, if the Conference could not meet the finan-
246
Dr. Coke, FATHER OF METHODIST MISSIONS

cial expense of the mission, he offered to lay
down thirty thousand dollars toward it. . .

“The Conference could not resist longer
without denying its old faith in the providence
of God. It voted him authority to go and take
with him seven men, including the one for
southern Africa. Coke immediately called out
from the session Clough, the missionary who
had sympathized with him in his defeat the day
before, and walking down the street, not now
with tears, but with joy beaming in his eye,
and with a full heart, exclaimed, ‘ Did I not
tell you God would answer prayer?’ ”’

Among the missionaries who accompanied
him was William Martin Harvard, who, after
five years’ residence in India and Ceylon, be-
came subsequently superintendent of Missions
in Canada, residing for ten years at Montreal,
Quebec, Toronto, and other important centers
of influence.

Soon the missionary band assembled at Ports-
mouth for embarkation. Dr. Coke made his
will and bequeathed all his property to the fund
for aged and worn-out ministers. The Sunday
before sailing he preached his last sermon in
England, from the text, ‘‘ Ethiopia shall soon
stretch out her hands unto God.” With pro-
phetic faith he exclaims, ‘‘ It is of little conse-

quence whether we take our flight to glory from
247
MAKERS OF METHODISM

the land of our nativity, from the trackless ocean,
or from the shores of Ceylon.
“«T cannot go

Where universal Love not shines around ;
And where he vital breathes there must be joy.”

Like these are the exultant words of the monk
Jerome, in the fourth century: ‘‘ Et de Hier-
osolymis et de Britannia zequaliter patet aula
ceelestis,” thus paraphrased by Horatius Bonar:

“Not from Jerusalem alone
The path to heaven ascends :
As near, as sure, as straight the way
That leads to the celestial day
From farthest climes extends—
Frigid or torrid zone.”

’

‘On the 30th of December, 1813,” continues
the narrative of Dr. Stevens, ‘‘ they departed
ina fleet of six Indiamen and more than twenty
other merchant vessels, convoyed by three ships
of war. Coke and two of the missionaries were
on board one of the Indiamen, and the rest of
the party on board another. All were treated
with marked respect by the officers andthe hun-
dreds of troops and other passengers who
crowded the vessels. In about a week a terrific
gale overtook them in the Bay of Biscay, and a
ship full of people, in which Coke had at first
designed to embark, was lost.

‘« Severe gales still swept over them, espe-
248
Dr. COKE, FATHER OF METHODIST MISSIONS

cially at the Cape of Good Hope. Several sailors
were lost overboard, and the missionaries suf-
fered much in their health. . . . In the Indian
Ocean Coke’s health rapidly declined. On the
morning of the 3d of May his servant knocked
at his cabin door to awake him at the usual time
of half-past five o'clock. He heard no response.
Opening the door, he beheld the lifeless body of
the missionary extended on the floor. <A ‘placid
smile was on his countenance.’ He was cold
and stiff, and must have died before midnight.

‘« Consternation spread among the missionary
band, but they lost not their resolution. They
prepared to commit his body to the deep, and
to prosecute, as they might be able, his great
design. One of the missionaries read the burial
service, and the moment the sun sunk below the
Indian Ocean the coffin was cast into the depths.”

In his last letter, written a few days before
his death, Coke earnestly asks for additional mis-
sionaries, sketches his work in Ceylon and India,
and anticipates tracing the work of ‘‘ that holy
and celebrated man, Francis Xavier.”

The missionaries with heavy hearts proceeded
on their journey, and after a voyage of twenty
weeks reached Bombay. But God raised them
up friends and opened the way before them.
On reaching Ceylon they were hospitably lodged

in the government house. Lord Molesworth,
249
MAKERS OF METHODISM

the commandant, who, with his troops, attended
the first service, was so deeply impressed by the
sermon that he left a dinner party to kneel in
prayer with the missionaries till he found peace
in believing. Soon after, returning to England,
his ship was lost with all on board save two or
three. While it was sinking he walked the
deck, pointing the terrified passengers to the
Saviour of men. Embracing Lady Molesworth,
they sank into the waves, locked in each others’
arms, and thus folded together they were washed
ashore. Such were the first fruits of the Meth-
odist Mission in Ceylon.

Another trophy of that first sermon became
the first native missionary to Asia. Many of
the priests also believed. One of these intro-
duced Mr. Harvard, afterward Canadian super-
intendent, into a temple where, in front of a
great idol, he preached from the text, ‘‘We
know that an idol is nothing in the world, and
that there is none other God but one.” The
good work rapidly spread, till there are in Ceylon
sixty missionaries and assistants, one hundred
and twenty preaching places, and over three
thousand church members.

The death of Dr. Coke was the beginning of
a new era in the history of Methodist Missions.
All the branches of Methodism have their mis-

sionary societies, which have become the most
250
Dr. COKE, FATHER OF METHODIST MISSIONS

vigorous propaganda in the world of the Chris-
tian religion among the heathen. In Ceylon, in
India, in China, in Japan, in South and West
Africa, in the West Indies, in South America,
in continental Europe, in Australia and Poly-
nesia, multitudes of sunken and superstitious
pagans have been raised from abject depths of
degradation to the dignity of men and prepared
for the fellowship of saints. And this glorious
result is in large part the monument and me-
morial of the life and labors of Dr. Thomas

Coke, the father of Methodist Missions.
251
MAKERS OF METHODISM

XII

Francis Asbury, the Pioneer Bishop of America

‘““ WHOSOEVER will be great among you, let
him be your minister; and whosoever will be
chief among you, let him be your servant.”
Such were the words with which the Son of
man, who came not to be ministered unto, but
to minister, rebuked the worldly ambition and
self-seeking of his disciples. The sovereign
pontiffs of Rome, who, surrounded by halber-
diers, received the homage of princes, subscribed
themselves, even in their most imperious edicts,
‘«Servus servorum Dei” (the servant of the serv-
ants of God). These words, which only in the
keenest irony could be addressed to those spir-
itual potentates, describe in sober truth the
character of Francis Asbury, the pioneer bishop
of America.

At the mention of that name there rises the
vision of an aged man with snow-white hair and
benignant aspect, worn with toil and travel,
brown with the brand of the sun and with ex-
posure to the vicissitudes of fair and foul
weather. His brow, the home of high thoughts,

is furrowed by the care of all the churches com-
252
Francis Aspury, PIONEER BisHop or AMERICA

ing upon him daily. No prelatic lawn, like
‘“samite, mystic, wonderful,” invests with its
flowing folds his person. Clad in sober black
or homespun brown, he bestrides his horse, his
wardrobe and library contained in the bulging

 

FRANCIS ASBURY.

saddlebags which constitute his sole equipage.
Instead of lodging in an episcopal palace, he is
glad to find shelter in the hut of a backwoods
settler or to bivouac beneath the open sky.
With much of their original force he might

adopt the words of the first and greatest mis-
17 253
MAKERS OF METHODISM

sionary of the cross, and exclaim: ‘‘ In journey-
ings often, in perils of waters, in perils of
robbers, . . . in perils in the wilderness, .. .
in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often,
in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold
and nakedness.” With no less truthfulness than
St. Paul himself might he declare, ‘‘ We preach
not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and
ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.” He
was an heroic soul in anheroicage. Heunited,
in a rich garland of graces, the fervor of an
apostle, the boldness of a confessor, the piety of
a saint, the tenderness of a woman, and the self-
sacrifice of a martyr. His life and labors will
well repay our study.

Francis Asbury was a gift from the Old
World to the New—from the mother to the
daughter land. He was born in Staffordshire,
near Birmingham, in 1745, the year of the
Scottish rising in favor of the Pretender. He
was early sent toschool, but suffered much from
the petty tyranny of the pedant pedagogue, who,
‘clothed with a little brief authority,’ made the
lives of his pupils bitter unto them. But even
as a child he carried his troubles to the throne
of grace. He records that ‘‘God was very near
to him—a very present help in time of trouble.”

In his fourteenth year he left home to learn a

trade. His religious impressions deepened, and
254

 
FRANCIS ASBURY, PIONEER BISHOP OF AMERICA

hearing the Methodists spoken against, as a peo-
ple righteous overmuch, he sought their ac-
quaintance. His desire was soon gratified. He
expressed some surprise that the service was not
in achurch. Itwas probably in a private house
or barn. ‘‘ But,” he records, ‘‘it was better than
a church; the people were so devout; men and
women kneeling and all saying ‘Amen.’”

This simple spiritual worship took hold of his
soul. He engaged with zeal in religious work,
holding prayer meetings on heath and holt, in
cottage and on common. He was rewarded by
seeing many converted from their sins. He
was soon licensed as local preacher, and held
forth the word of life in the Wesleyan chapels
of the vicinity to ‘‘ wondering, weeping thou-
sands.” Multitudes were attracted by his ex-
treme youth, he being then not more than seven-
teen years of age. Besides his Sabbath services
he often preached five times during the week,
faithfully attending meanwhile to his daily toil.

In his twenty-first year he was received into
the Wesleyan Conference and appointed to cir-
cuit work. As an obedient son in the Gospel
he labored faithfully on his several circuits. At
the Bristol Conference, in 1771, John Wesley
called for volunteers for the work in America.
His heart still lingered on the shores where he

had toiled and endured great trial of affliction a
255
MAKERS OF METHODISM

quarter of acentury before. Whitefield, with
tongue of fire and heart of flame, had traversed
the continent—like an angel, trumpet-tongued—
calling on men everywhere to repent. Philip
Embury and Captain Webb had begun to or-
ganize Methodist societies in the New World,
and thither Pilmoor and Boardman had been
sent two years before. Among the first to re-
spond to Wesley’s call was Francis Asbury,
unknowing of the toil and trial he thus espoused
or of the glorious reward and abiding renown
that he should win.

With tears and many prayers he took leave
of his beloved parents, whom he was never to
see again. His outfit was of the slenderest kind,
and on shipboard he was obliged to sleep on the
bare planks. Full of zeal, he preached to the
sailors when it was so stormy that he had to seek
support from the mast. His heart yearned for
the multitudes wandering in the wilderness of
the New World as sheep having no shepherd.

After a weary eight-weeks’ voyage he reached
Philadelphia. He began forthwith his active
work, and his labors were followed by a “ great
awakening.” He had been thoroughly steeped
with the principle of John Wesley—‘‘to go to
those who needed him most.’”” From an entry
in his Journal we learn what manner of man he

was: ‘‘My brethren seem unwilling to leave
256
FRANCIS ASBURY, PIONEER BISHOP OF AMERICA

the cities, but I think I shall show them the
way... . I have nothing to seek but the glory
of God, nothing to fear but his displeasure. . . .
Iam determined that no man shall bias me with
soft words and fair speeches, nor will I ever
fear the face of man, or know any man after the
flesh, if I beg my bread from door to door; but,

 

whomsoever I please or displease, I will be faith-
ful to God, to the people, and to my own soul.”
There spoke the hero heart. In this man dwelt
the spirit of John Knox or of John the Baptist.
He was evidently a God-appointed captain of

Israel’s host and true overshepherd of souls.
257
MAKERS OF METHODISM

Forthwith Asbury began to range through the
country, everywhere preaching the word. At
New York he preached to five thousand people
on the race-course, and exhorted the multitude
to run with patience the race set before them.

In 1772 Wesley appointed Asbury superin-
tendent of the societies in America, which had
considerably increased in number. The next year
the first Conference was held in Philadelphia.
So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed
that for several years the membership was
nearly doubled annually. Great revivals took
place, especially in Maryland and Virginia.
Multitudes were stricken to the earth as by a
supernatural power, and rose to praise God.

The unhappy conflict with the mother coun-
try now broke out. The bruit of war was abroad
inthe land. Some of the English preachers felt
constrained by their loyalty to return home.
But Asbury declared: ‘‘I can by no means leave
such a field for gathering souls to Christ as we
have in America; neither is it the part of a
good shepherd to leave his flock in time of
danger. Therefore I am determined, by the
grace of God, not to leave them, let the conse-
quence be what it may.”

During a fit of sickness in 1776 he went to
recuperate at Warm Sulphur Springs, Virginia.

His lodgings, he said, though only sixteen feet
258
FRANCIS ASBURY, PIONEER BISHOP OF AMERICA

by twenty, contained seven beds and sixteen
persons, besides some noisy children. His plan
of duty as an invalid was ‘‘to read about a hun-
dred pages a day, pray in public five times a
day, preach in the open air every other day, and
lecture in prayer meeting every evening.” Un-
der this regimen, with the blessing of God, he
soon recovered his health.

Suspected, apparently, of sympathy with the
mother country, he was required to take the oath
of allegiance to the State of Maryland. Its form,
however, was such that he could not conscien-
tiously accept it. He was therefore obliged to
leave the State and take refuge in Delaware,
where the State oath was not required of minis-
ters of religion. He found an asylum fora time
inthe house ofafriend. He soon discovered, how-
ever, that he must seek safety elsewhere, and he
went forth as a fugitive, not knowing whither he
went. He had not gone many miles before he met
a funeral. Although it increased his danger, he
did not hesitate to stop and give an address full
of Christian sympathy.

He was compelled to take refuge in ‘‘a wild
and dismal swamp,” which he likened to ‘‘ the
shades of death.” Three thousand miles from
home and kindred, regarded as an enemy to his
adopted country, and, worst of all, obliged to

remain in hiding when the word of God wasa
259
MAKERS OF METHODISM

fire in his bones, and his soul was longing to
range the country and proclaim the Gospel to
perishing multitudes, his heart was much de-
pressed. Yet did he sing his ‘‘Sursum Corda 7
in the wilderness, and, under the special pro-
tection of the governor of the State, who knew
and honored his worth, was allowed to come
forth from his hiding and engage without hin-
drance in his work.

That work was no holiday amusement. The
following extracts from his Journal will indicate
its character: ‘‘We set out for Crump’s, over
rocks, hills, creeks, and pathless woods. The
young man with me was heartless before we had
traveled a mile... .With great difficulty we came
into the settlement . . . after traveling eight or
nine hours, the people looking almost as wild as
the deer in the woods. . . . I can see little else
but cabins in these parts, built with poles. I
crossed Deep River in a ferryboat, and the poor
ferryman swore because I had not a shilling to
give him.”* Swimming his horse across another
river, he found shelter in the cabin of a friendly
settler. ‘‘His resting place, however,” says
Strickland’s record of his life, ‘‘ was on the top
of achest, and his clothes his only covering.

 

*On another occasion a ferryman declined to take any fee, saying he never
charged ministers or babes, for, if they did no good, they did no harm. ‘ Nay,”
replied Asbury, ‘that is not true, for the minister who does no good does much
harm,”

260
FRANCIS ASBURY, PIONEER BISHOP OF AMERICA

This, however, was better far than he often
had. Frequently, when benighted in the wil-
derness, he has slept on the ground or on rocks,
or on some boards in a deserted cabin, with
nothing to eat.” Day after day he traveled over
the broken spurs of the Alleghanies, without
food from morning to night. His mind was
raised to loftiest contemplation by the sublime
scenery, and his heart was cheered by his op-
portunities of breaking the bread of life to the
lonely mountaineers.

A change in his relations to the Church was
now to take place. ‘‘ Fifteen years,” says Dr.
Strickland, ‘‘ had elapsed since Asbury began
preaching in America. He was now forty years
of age, and more than half of his life had been
spent in preaching the Gospel, yet up to this
time he was an wnordained man. No ordi-
nances of the Church had ever yet been admin-
istered by his hands, and he consented, with the
rest of his brethren in the ministry, to receive
the sacrament at the hands of the Episcopal
priesthood.” There were now in America one
hundred and four Methodist ministers, and the
membership had risen to fifteen thousand.

It was felt that the time had come when the
anomalous condition of these men should cease.
John Wesley, therefore, wrote a memorable

epistle—often quoted—to the American socie-
201
MAKERS OF METHODISM

ties, from which we make the following ex-
tracts:

“Lord King’s Account of the Primitive Church con-
vinced me many years ago that bishops and presbyters are
the same order, and, consequently, have the same right to or-
dain. For many years I have been importuned from time to
time to exercise this right by ordaining part of our traveling
preachers, but I have still refused, not only for peace’ sake,
but because I was determined as little as possible to violate
the established order of the national Church to which I belong.

“But the case is widely different between England and
America. Here there are bishops who have a legal jurisdic-
tion. In America there are none, and but few parish ministers,
so that for some hundred miles together there is none either
to baptize or to administer the Lord’s Supper. Here, there-
fore, my scruples are at an end, and I conceive myself at full
liberty, as I violate no order and invade no man’s right by ap-
pointing and sending laborers into the harvest.

“T have accordingly appointed Dr. Coke and Mr. Francis
Asbury to be joint superintendents over our brethren in North
America; as also Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey to
act as elders among them by administering baptism and the
Lord’s Supper.

“Tf anyone will point out a more rational and _ scriptural
way of feeding and guiding those poor sheep in the wilderness,
I will gladly embrace it. At present I cannot see any better
method than that I have taken.

“As our American brethren are now totally disentangled
both from the State and the English hierarchy, we dare not
entangle them again either with the one or the other. They
are now at full liberty simply to follow the Scriptures and the
primitive Church. And we judge it best they should stand
fast in that liberty wherewith God has so strangely made them
free.

“JOHN WESLEY.”
262
FRANCIS ASBURY, PIONEER BISHOP OF AMERICA

This document exhibits at once the wise
judgment and lofty Christian expediency of the
founder of Methodism. His challenge to be
shown amore excellent way of dealing with the
question has not yet been accepted. We can-
not but regard it as a providential blessing that
the Bishop of London declined to ordain Dr.
Coke as a bishop for America, thus breaking
forever the superstitious bond of so-called apos-
tolic succession so far as concerned the free
Methodism of the New World.

In the gathering of the itinerant preachers
assembled at Baltimore, December 24, 1784,*
this figment of priestcraft, which makes validity
of ordination depend on a shadowy succession
through the Dark Ages asthe only vehicle of
apostolic grace, was boldly repudiated. It was
felt that the true anointing was that of the Holy
Ghost—that the real successors of the apostles
were those who received their inspiration and
authority from the same Master and Lord.

This Conference therefore organized itself
into ‘‘ The Methodist Episcopal Church of the
United States,” and Dr. Thomas Coke and
Francis Asbury were elected the first bishops
thereof. As Asbury was up to this period an
unordained man, he was first, on Christmas

 

*Tt is known as the Christmas Conference, It lasted from December 24,
1784, to January 2, 1785.

263
MAKERS OF METHODISM

Day, ordained by Dr. Coke, deacon; on the
26th, elder; and on the following day, bishop
or “superintendent,” as he is called in the
official document.

Such rapid ecclesiastical promotion is, we be-
lieve, unprecedented since the days of St. Am-
brose, who, notwithstanding his vigorous ‘*‘ xolo
cpiscopari,”” was, though but a catechumen,
elected Bishop of Milan A. D. 374.

The new title of Asbury, however, increased
neither his power nor his influence among his
brethren. He already ruled by love in all their
hearts. His elevation of office gave him only
preeminence in toil. The day after the Con-
ference he rode fifty miles through forest and
snow; the next day he rode forty more, and so
on till the Sabbath, when he halted for labor,
not for rest. This was his initiation into the
office of bishop.

True to its original genius, American Metho-
dism promoted zealously the cause of higher
education. With much effort Cokesbury Col-
lege—commemorating in its name the two
superintendents of the Church—was established
in the lovely valley of the Susquehanna, over-
looking the broad Chesapeake Bay. The cur-
riculum was comprehensive, embracing English,
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and German.

To preachers’ sons and indigent students tuition,
264
FRANCIS ASBURY, PIONEER BISHOP OF AMERICA

board, and clothing were free. Others were ex-
pected to pay a moderate fee. The ‘‘recrea-
tion” of the students consisted in agricultural
labor and building—‘‘ both necessary,” it is re-
marked, ‘‘in a new country.” After a useful
and successful existence for ten years it was
burned to the ground. A heap of smoldering
ruins was all that marked its lovely site.

Asbury, on whom devolved the chief toil of
finding funds for its maintenance, thus writes,
date 1796: ‘‘ Cokesbury College is consumed to
ashes, a sacrifice of £10,000 in ten years [an
immense sum in those days]. If any man
would give me £10,000 per year to do and suf-
fer again what I have done for that house, I
would not do it.” His salary at this time was
sixty-four dollars a year. It was evidently,
therefore, not for the emolument that he ‘‘did
and suffered” all this.

Undaunted by disaster, the Methodists of Bal-
timore purchased, at a cost of $22,000, a build-
ing in that city, and established Asbury College.
The change of name, however, brought no
change of fortune, and it, too, was soon de-
stroyed by fire.

A Methodist academy was also established in
Georgia, and another in the West; but the
difficulty of maintenance was great. ‘‘ We have

the poor,” writes Asbury, ‘‘but they have no
265
MAKERS OF METHODISM

money, and the wicked rich we do not wish to
ask.”

Asbury’s labors during this period were ex-
cessive, his lodgings were often wretched, and
his fare was meager and poor. He and Dr.
Coke sometimes rode three hundred miles a
week, preaching every day. Asbury’s Journal
recounts his riding seventy-five miles in one day,
reaching a cabin at midnight, and leaving it at
four inthe morning. Sometimes he slept in the
woods, sometimes on the floor of a cabin, whose
walls were oftened adorned with coon or wild-
cat skins, and sometimes he fared even worse,
for he writes, ‘‘O, how glad should I be of a
plain cleank plank to lie on as preferable to the
beds!”’ It was his misfortune to have a deli-
cate skin andakeen sense of smell. It was con-
sidered a lucky day when he dined on raccoon
or bearsteaks, cooked by a fire that the wind and
rain often extinguished.

In some of his distant missionary excursions
—at times traveling fifty miles without seeing a
house—for protection against wild beasts and
wilder men Asbury used to travel with armed
bands of mounted hunters. It was a time of
Indian massacres. The fate of the victims was
most tragical; one wretched survivor was four
days dragging herself a distance of only two

miles. Sometimes Asbury'’s party were pursued
266
Francis Aspury, PIONEER BISHOP OF AMERICA

by bands of infuriated savages, to escape from
whom they had to press on all night through
the tangled wilderness.

Asbury never married. In his quaint Journal
he gives the following reasons for what could
scarcely be called his choice: ‘‘ Among the
duties of my office was that of traveling exten-
sively, and I could hardly expect to find a woman
with grace enough to enable her to live but one
week out of fifty-two with her husband. Be-
sides, what right hasany man to take advantage
of the affections of a woman, make her his wife,
and by voluntary absence subvert the whole
order and economy of -the marriage state by
separating those whom neither God, nature, nor
the requirements of civil society permit long to
be put asunder? It is neither just nor gener-
ous. I may add to this that I had but little
money, and with this I administered to the
necessities of a beloved mother till I was fifty-
seven. If I have done wrong, I hope God and
the sex will forgive me.”

‘« He often impoverished himself,” writes his
biographer, ‘‘ to relieve the wants of others. At
one time we find him with only two dollars in
the world, and his poor preachers ragged and
destitute. First his little purse was drained,
and then followed his cloak and watch and

shirt.”” His own clothes were often threadbare
267
MAKERS OF METHODISM

and faded, and he has been known to start on a
journey of two thousand miles with an outfit of
only three dollars. He was almost as depend-
ent on the providence of God as was Elijah when
fed by ravens. These were no times for marry-
ing or giving in marriage. He who did so was
almost invariably compelled to ‘‘ locate” in order
to earn a living for his family. ‘‘ We have lost
the labors,” writes Asbury, ‘‘ of two hundred of
the best men of America from this cause.”

As a discreet unmarried man, who was des-
tined by his own choice to live and die in celib-
acy, Asbury, when he could do so, avoided the
society of ladies. But sometimes he could not
do so. Dr. Strickland, in his biography, relates
one instance which we give largely in his own
words:

Asbury was traveling in a wild Western coun-
try, and was in danger of missing his way and
becoming lost in the woods. The daughter of
his host proposed to pioneer him through the
wilderness. He did not positively decline the
offer of his fair guide, though it would have
suited his notions better to have gone alone,
even if he had missed his way. Roads there
were none; nothing but blind or ‘‘blazed”
paths. The horses were soon ready and the
bishop in his saddle. With the celerity for

which the Western girls were famous Mary
268
FRANCIS ASBURY, PIONEER BISHOP OF AMERICA

sprang to the back of her spirited steed and was
at once by his side. They soon entered the
forest and were lost to sight. Mary knew the
route and led the way.

They came at length to a deep and narrow
ravine, whose rugged and precipitous banks
seemed to forbid a passage. The bishop at be-
holding it felt relieved, as he thought he had
arrived at a Rubicon which his fair companion
could not pass. Spurring his horse, he cleared
the ravine at a bound. He congratulated him-
self that he was now rid of what he felt rather
an incumbrance, as he had considerable qualms
of conscience about going to the appointment,
where he was a stranger, in company with a
young lady.

Turning on his horse, he was about bidding
her good-bye, with the exclamation, ‘Mary,
you can’t do that’’—a most unhappy suggestion
for him to make to a proud-spirited Western girl. .
“T’ll try,” was her prompt and fearless response,
and, suiting the action to the word, horse and
rider were in a moment at his side. Faithful
to her task, she accompanied the bishop to the
end of his journey, and after the preaching re-
turned with him to her father’s house.

Asbury was the father of missions in Ameri-
can Methodism, sending out preachers to the

destitute settlements, and soliciting funds all
18 269
MAKERS OF METHODISM

over the country for their support. He also
established ‘‘ The Preachers’ Fund” for the aid
of superannuates, widows, and orphans. He or-
ganized the Book Concern, which has been such
a source of diffusion of religious light and
knowledge. He was the first man in America to
introduce Sunday schools (1786). The schools,
according to the Discipline of 1792, were held
“from six in the morning until ten, and from
two in the afternoon until six,’’ where it did not
interfere with public worship.

The early years of this century were times of
great religious revival, especially in the Middle
and Southern States. The immense gatherings
known as cap meetings took their origin from
the open-air sacramental services held by the
Presbyterian ministers, which lasted several
days. Sometimes from ten to fifteen thousand
persons were assembled, and the Presbyterian
and Methodist ministers labored side by side in
their work of faith. So vast were the crowds
that several preachers from different stands
proclaimed at the same time the word of life,
and hundreds might have been seen prostrate
on the earth or wild with joy, shouting the
praises of God. Sometimes thirty preachers
were present and four hundred persons were
converted.

Toil, travel, and exposure wore down Asbury’s
270
FRANCIS ASBURY, PIONEER BISHOP OF AMERICA

strength, yet he gave himself no rest. In his
fifty-seventh year he crossed the rugged Cum-
berland Mountains for the fiftieth time. He
was suffering from acute pain in his whole body
and with swelling of his knees, which he at-
tributed to sleeping uncovered in the woods.
By the aid of laudanum he got two hours’ sleep
in the forest beneath a blanket stretched out
like a tent. His companions slept beneath a
cloak thrown over a branch. He had to be
lifted on his horse like a child. Scarce able to
refrain from crying out in his agony, he writes,
‘«Lord, let me die, for death hath no terrors.”’
Yet the heroic soul so sustained the frail body
that through mountains and forests he com-
pleted his usual yearly journey of six thousand
miles.

He deeply commiserated the wretched emi-
grants journeying by hundreds over the moun-
tains—almost foodless, shelterless, clothesless,
toiling along on foot, those who were best off
having only one horse for two or three chil-
dren to ride at once. Yearning over these
lost sheep in the wilderness, he writes in his
Journal, ‘‘ We must send preachers after these
people.”

Methodism in those days was to many an ob-
ject of intense aversion. Let one example of

this suffice: Dr. Hinde was the military physi-
271
MakErS OF METHODISM

cian of General Wolfe. At the close of the
French war he settled in Kentucky. His wife
and daughter joined the Methodists. The
latter he banished from home. The former he
put under medical treatment for what he feigned
to regard asinsanity. His remedy wasa blister
plaster extending the whole length of the back.
The fortitude and meekness with which the
Christian wife bore her persecutions resulted in
the doctor’s conviction and subsequent conver-
sion. He became one of Asbury’s best friends.
‘‘Ve will never again,” wrote the bishop, ‘‘ put
a blister on his wife’s head to draw the Metho-
dism out of her heart.”

In his sixty-third year the indomitable pioneer
writes: ‘‘I am young again and boast of being
able to ride six thousand miles on horseback in
ten months. My round will embrace the United
States, the territory, and Canada.” At this age
he frequently rode three hundred miles a week.
On his ‘‘ round” he was attacked with imflamma-
tory rheumatism. But he provided himself with
a pair of crutches and rode on through a shower
of rain. He had to be lifted from his horse and
carried into the house.

The Rev. Henry Boehm thus describes Bishop
Asbury’s visit to Canada in 1811: ‘‘ Having
crossed Lake Champlain, the bishop preached in

a barroom at Plattsburg, and the next day
272
FRANCIS ASBURY, PIONEER BISHOP OF AMERICA

entered Canada. The roads over rocks, gullies,
and stumps were enough to jolt a hale bishop to
death, let alone a poor, infirm old man. On
entering St. Regis, as Bishop Asbury was lead-
ing his horse across a bridge made of poles, the
animal got his feet between them and sunk into
the mud and water. Away went the saddle-
bags; the books and clothes were wet, and the
horse was fast. We gota pole under him to pry
him out; at the same time the horse made a leap
and came out safe and sound.

‘We crossed the St. Lawrence in romantic
style. We hired four Indians to paddle us over.
They lashed three log canoes together and put
our horses in them, their fore feet in one canoe,
their hind feet in another. We were a long
time crossing, for some part was rough, espe-
cially the rapids, and reached shelter about mid-

night.

‘«The bishop was delighted with the people
and the country. ‘Here is a decent, loving
people,’ he wrote. ‘My soul is much united to

them. Surely this is a land which God hath
blessed.’ He called on the Heck family, the
Methodist pioneers of Canada, as of the United
States, and traveled over the rough roads suffer-
ing like a martyr with inflammatory rheumatism.
He crossed Lake Ontario from Kingston to

Sackett’s Harbor in an open sailboat. A tre-
273
MAKERS OF METHODISM

mendous storm broke upon them. In order to
make the bishop as comfortable as possible,”
continues Mr. Boehm, ‘‘I made him a bed,
covered him with the blankets we carried with
us, and fixed the canvas over him like a tent, to
keep off the wind and the rain. Then I lay down
on the bottom of the boat on some stones placed
there for ballast, which I covered with some hay
I procured at Kingston for our horses. At mid-
night a sudden squall struck our frail bark; the
canvas flapped and awoke and alarmed the
bishop. He cried out, ‘Henry! Henry! the
horses are going overboard.’ I told him all was
safe, that it was merely the flapping of the sail
in the midnight winds. Reaching land, the
feeble old bishop, with inflamed and swollen
foot, set out on horseback in a heavy rain for
Conference, ‘sore, lame, and weary,’ ‘But
Bishop McKendree,’ he wrote, ‘nursed me as if
I had been his own babe.’”

His growing infirmities now compelled him
to use a carriage, and this is the way the grand
old veteran writes: ‘‘ We are riding in a poor
thirty-dollar chaise in partnership, two bishops
of us [himself and Bishop McKendree], but it
must be confessed it tallies well with our purses.
What bishops! Well, but we have great names;
each Western, Southern, and Virginia Confer-

ence will have a thousand souls truly converted
274
FRANCIS ASBURY, PIONEER BISHOP OF AMERICA

to God; and is this not an equivalent for a light
purse, and are we not well paid for starving and
toil? Yes, glory to God!”

Yet he felt the weight of years and travail. A
little later he writes: ‘‘I am happy; but I am
sick and weak and in heaviness by reason of
suffering and labor. Sometimes I am ready to
cry out, ‘Lord, take me home to rest.’ Courage,
my soul!”

His work seemed to increase as his time for
toil grew shorter. In his seventieth year he
traveled six thousand miles in eight months,
met nine Conferences, and attended ten camp
meetings, and at these meetings he toiled above
measure, often sleeping but two hours out of
the twenty-four. Even when he had to be car-
ried into the church he would preach with un-
quenchable zeal. From one of these services
he was carried to his lodgings and ‘‘ thoroughly
blistered,”’ says the record, ‘‘for high fever.”
Two days after he rode thirty miles through the
bitter cold, and next day thirty-six more, when
he was again carried to the pulpit to preach the
word of life. But the frail body was borne up
by the strong soul that seemed as if it would not
let him die.

But the end was approaching. In his seventy-
first year he attended his last Conference. Like

a faithful patriarch, leaning upon his staff, he
275
MAKERS OF METHODISM

addressed the elders of the tribes of the Metho-
dist Israel, being assured that he would ere long
be called away from their councils. A sense of
loneliness came upon him as he remembered the
friends of other days who had passed away.
Five and forty years of toil and travail in cities
and villages, in the log cabins and wildernesses
of the far West and South, traveling round the
continent, with but few exceptions, every year
(he crossed the Alleghanies sixty times), subject
to every kind of itinerant hardship and priva-
tion, wasted away the frail body, but left his in-
domitable spirit strong in immortal youth,
preening its wings for its everlasting flight to
that land where they grow not weary evermore.

When unable longer to stand he sat in the
pulpit, and poured out the treasures of his lov-
ing, overflowing heart to the weeping multitude,
who sorrowed most of all at the thought ‘that
they should see his face no more.” He writes
at this time in his Journal, ‘‘I die daily; am
made perfect by labor and suffering. There is
no time nor opportunity to take medicine by
daytime. I must do it at night. Iam wasting
away.”

By slow and difficult stages, continues Dr.
Strickland, whose account we condense, he
passed through South and North Carolina till

he reached Richmond, Va. ‘‘I must once more
276
FRANCIS ASBURY, PIONEER BISHOP OF AMERICA

deliver my testimony in this place,” he urged
in reply to remonstrance. It was a bright spring
Sabbath, glorious with all the beauty of the
South. The venerable bishop, with his silvery
hair flowing down his shoulders, announced in
tremulous tones his last text: ‘‘ For he will fin-
ish the work and cut it short in righteousness.”
He seemed like one who was waiting for the
summons of the heavenly Bridegroom. From
time to time he was compelled to pause from
sheer exhaustion. Nevertheless he preached
for nearly an hour, during which time, says the
narrator, a deep and awful stillness pervaded
the entire assembly, broken only by the sobs of
sympathetic hearers. The spectacle was one of
moral sublimity.

Eager to attend the General Conference at
Baltimore, the dying man pressed on. But near
Fredericksburg, on ground since deluged with
blood shed in civil war, he reached his last
earthly resting place. He was carried into the
house which he was never to leave till his worn
and weary body should be carried to the tomb.
On the last Sabbath of his life he called the fam-
ily together for worship. The twenty-first chap-
ter of Revelation was read; and, doubtless,
by the eye and ear of faith, he beheld the holy
city coming down out of heaven and heard the

blessed assurance that God would wipe away all
277
MAKERS OF METHODISM

tears forever. As the service closed the spirit
of the patriarch passed away, and thus,
Like some broad river widening toward the sea,
Calmly and grandly joined eternity.

Beneath the pulpit of the Eutaw Methodist
Church, in Baltimore, where he had so often
preached in life, sleep the remains of the pioneer
bishop of America. In labors he was more
abundant than even the apostolic Wesley him-
self, since the conditions under which he toiled
were so much more arduous. He ordained up-
ward of three thousand preachers. He preached
seventeen thousand sermons. He traveled three
hundred thousand miles—from the pine-shad-
owed St. Lawrence to the savannas of Georgia,
from the surges of the Atlantic to the mighty
Father of Waters—through pathless forests,
over rugged mountains, and across rapid rivers.
He had the care of a hundred thousand souls
and the appointment of four hundred preachers.

His character was one of the most rounded
and complete and his life one of the most heroic
recorded in the annals of the Church. Says
one who knew him well: ‘‘ He was great with-
out science and venerable without titles. He
pursued that most difficult course as most men
pursue their pleasures. The delights of leisured
study and the charms of recreation he alike sac-

rificed to the more sublime work of saving souls.
278
FRANCIS ASBURY, PIONEER BISHOP OF AMERICA

Prayer was the seasoning of all his avocations.
It was the preface to all business, the conclu-
sion of whatever he undertook. He never suf-
tered the cloth to be removed from the table till
he nad given thanks to God in prayer.”

His preaching was attended with a divine
unction which made it refreshing as the dew of
heaven. His words were at times ‘‘ a dagger to
the hilt at every stroke,” and at times so tender
that they made the hearts of listening thousands

“ Thrill as if an angel spoke,
Or Ariel’s finger touched the string.”

He was a man dead to the world—a man of
one work. The zeal of the Lord’s ‘house con-
sumed him till he wore out in the work and died
at his post. ‘‘If I can only be instrumental,”
he was wont to exclaim, with streaming eyes,
‘¢in saving one soul in traveling round the con-
tinent, I’ll travel round till I die.”

His devotion and tenderness toward his par-
ents were exceedingly beautiful. In their old
age he regularly remitted to them a portion
of his meager income. ‘‘My salary,” he writes,
‘‘ig sixty-four dollars. I have sold my watch
and library, and would sell my shirts before
you should want. I spend very little. The con-
tents of a small pair of saddlebags will do for

me, and one coat a year. Had I ten thousand
279
MAKERS OF METHODISM

pounds per year, you should be welcome if you
needed it.”

To his aged and widowed mother he wrote,
with tender recollections of his boyhood: ‘Were
you to see me and the color of my hair—nearly
that of your own—my eyes are weak, even with
glasses. When I was a child and would pry
into the Bible by twinkling firelight you used
to say, ‘Frank, you will spoil your eyes.’ Hard
wear and hard fare; but I am healthy and lean,
eray-headed and dim-sighted. I wish I could
come to see you, but I see no way to do it with-
out sinning against God and his Church.”

Asbury could not be called in the strictest
sense a scholar. He never enjoyed the univer-
sity training of the Wesleys, Fletcher, and Coke.
But he was better read than many a college
graduate in theology, Church history and polity,
civil history, and general literature. In his sad-
dlebags he carried his Hebrew Bible and Greek
Testament, and in his long and lonely rides and
in the smoky cabins of the wilderness he dili-
gently studied the oracles of God in their origi-
nal tongues.

His Journals give evidence of his shrewd ob-
servation, keen wit, and strong idiomatic Eng-
lish. ‘‘Be the willing servant of slaves,” he
was wont to say, ‘‘ but the slave of none.” At

the Virginia salt works he writes, ‘‘ Alas! there
280
FRANCIS ASBURY, PIONEER BISHOP OF AMERICA

is little salt here, and when Sister Russell is gone
there will be none left.” He describes a jour-
ney in New Jersey as ‘‘over dead sands and
among a dead people.” Yale College in his day
was considered the ‘‘seat of science and sin.”
Yet, with all his wit, did he never in the pulpit
stoop

”

“ To court a grin when he should save a soul

His keen sense of the beautiful in nature is
shown in his sympathetic descriptions of the
‘“‘noble Hudson,” the ‘‘ lofty Catskills, with
their towering cliffs,” the ‘‘ beautiful Ohio,” the
wild Potomac,” the ‘‘lovely Shenandoah,”
‘‘thundering Niagara,” ‘‘ the interminable for-
ests,” and the ‘broad prairies,” with whose
varied aspects he was so familiar.

Bishop Asbury had an intense antipathy to
the drinking customs so rife in the community,
which he denounced as the curse of the coun-
try. The vile whisky of the day he denomi-
nated ‘‘the devil’s tea.” He described the
drovers and their herds whom he met on the
roads as ‘‘ beasts on tour legs and beasts made
by whisky on two.” ‘Keep whisky out of
your cabins,” he was wont to exhort the set-
tlers, ‘‘and keep them clean, for your health’s
sake and for your soul’s sake; for there is no

religion in dirt, filth, and fleas.”
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MAKERS OF METHODISM

Few men were more revered and beloved.
Beyond the sea as well as at home his character
was honored, and the British Conference re-
quested him to visit that body, engaging to pay
all the expenses of his journey. Few have had
so many children named after them. Many of
these became his sons in the ministry. To all
who bore his name he left by his will a hand-
some copy of the Scriptures. Without wife or
child, the Church of God was his spouse, which
he loved and cherished better than his own life,
and a great multitude of spiritual offspring rose
up to call him blessed.

The record of such a life is an inspiration to
duty; a summons, like a clarion call, to blessed
toil for the Master and to increased zeal in his
service. It isascathing rebuke to self-seeking,
or apathy, or indolence in the most glorious of
callings. Asbury has lived out his threescore
years and ten on earth, but his work, behold, it
remaineth for evermore.

The struggle and grief are all past,
The glory and worth live on.

On the Methodism of this broad continent,
from the region beneath the Northern Bear to
that which sees the Southern Cross, from the
crowded cities on the Atlantic to the far-off lonely

regions
282
FRANCIS ASBURY, PIONEER BISHOP OF AMERICA

Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound

Save his own dashings,
he has impressed the stamp of his powerful
mind, his mighty faith, his unconquerable will.
And down the ages the tide of his influence
shall roll in ever-increasing volume till time

shall be no more.
283
MAKERS OF METHODISM

XII

Some Early Preachers and Bishops of American

Methodism

THE pioneer bishops, Asbury and Coke, had
worthy comrades and successors in the great
work of building up the Methodist Church on
this continent. Of afew of these we give brief
sketches, but of most of them the sole record is
on high. From the plastic state of society, from
the mighty forces which were molding the age,
men of force of character were enabled to leave
their impress more strongly on their time than
is now possible. They stood near the springs
of the nation’s history and were able to turn
their currents into the deep, wide channels in
which they now flow.

Such a man, contemporary with Coke and As-
bury, was Freeborn Garrettson. His very name
is significant of a high-souled love of liberty.
He was born about the middle of the eighteenth
century, of a leading Maryland family, possess-
ing broad acres and many slaves. The Metho-
dist itinerants were abroad in the land. Their
faithful preaching reached his conscience and

probed it to the quick. Riding through the
284
SOME EARLY PREACHERS AND BISHOPS

lonely forest he was so oppressed that he could
scarcely support his burden. ‘‘I threw,” he
says, ‘‘the reins of my bridle on the horse's
neck, and putting my hands together cried out,
‘+ Lord, I submit!’” Soon he was able to re-

 

FREEBORN GARRETYTSON,

joice in the sense of conscious pardon. ‘‘ My
soul was so exceedingly happy,” he adds, ‘‘ that
I seemed as if I wanted to take wing and fly

away to heaven.”
19 285
MAKERS OF METHODISM

A few days later he gathered his household
together and declared to his slaves their free-
dom, convinced that ‘‘it is not right to keep our
fellow-creatures in bondage.” ‘‘ Till then,” he
adds, ‘‘I had never suspected that slavekeep-
ing was wrong; I had never read abook on the
subject, nor been told so by any... . It was
God, not man, that taught me the impropriety
of holding slaves; and I shall never be able to
praise him enough for it.” They all knelt to-
gether, white and black, as children of a com-
mon Father, and, said the young emancipator,
‘a divine sweetness ran through my whole
frame.”

He forthwith began to exhort and preach
and form classes. The natural result soon fol-
lowed. ‘‘ He was attacked by ruffians, smitten
on the face, mobbed, and summoned to drill as
a soldier. When carried before a military of-
ficer he ‘told his experience,’ and sat on his
horse ‘ exhorting with tears a thousand people.’
The court martial dismissed him with a fine of
twelve dollars and a half a year, but he was never
called upon to pay it.”

He soon began his ‘‘ ranging” from the Car-
olinas to Nova Scotia, preaching ‘‘ twice, thrice,
and sometimes four times a day to listening
multitudes bathed in tears.” This he kept up

for half a century, and left ineffaceable ‘‘ foot-
286
SOME EARLY PREACHERS AND BISHOPS

prints in the sands of time” wherever he
preached. His views on slavery won him a
warm welcome of a not very cordialkind. ‘‘ He
was menaced by persecutors, interrupted some-
times in his sermons, threatened by armed men,
and one of his friends was shot (but not mortally)
for entertaining him.” Yet he preached often
to the slaves, ‘‘ weeping with them in their
wrongs and rejoicing in their consolations.” *

Once he was felled from his horse by a blow
on the head from a bludgeon and knocked sense-
less to the ground. Yet, like Stephen, he had
divine consolation under the rage of his perse-
cutors. ‘‘ The heavens,” he writes, ‘‘in a very
glorious manner seemed to be open; and by faith
I saw my dear Redeemer standing at the right
hand of the Father pleading my cause. ... I
was so happy that I could scarcely contain my-
self.”” With his face bruised and scarred, and
sore wounded, he preached that night from his
bed, and next day rode many miles and again
preached twice with power.

It was the unhappy period of the Revolution-
ary War. Political feeling ran high. ‘‘ He is
a Tory; hang him! hang him!” shouted the
mob, as he dismounted from hishorse. ‘‘I was

 

* When itinerating through New England many years later Garrettson was
often accompanied by his faithful companion, Black Harry, a pious colored man,
who not only ministered to his physical comfort, but also aided in his spiritual
labors by exhorting and preaching aft: r him.

287
MAKERS OF METHODISM

in a fair way,” he says, ‘‘to be torn to pieces.”
But with boldness he declared the whole council
of God. ‘One person sitting in a window, a
quarter of a mile away, was alarmed by the
truth and afterward converted.”

In a neighborhood which was notoriously
vicious—the haunt of ‘‘swearers, drunkards,
horse racers, and gamblers’’—he preached with
such power that the whole region was reformed.
In fifteen months in the Delaware peninsula thir-
teen hundred members were added to the Church.

In the same State he was arrested while
preaching, and thrown into jail. ‘‘ During a fort-
night,” he says, ‘‘I had a dirty floor for my
bed, my saddlebags for my pillow, and two large
windows open, with a cold east wind blowing
upon me. But I had great consolation in my
Lord, and could say, ‘Thy will be done.’ ...
Since that time I have preached to more than
three thousand people in one congregation not
far from the place where I was imprisoned, and
many of my worst enemies have bowed to the
scepter of our sovereign Lord.”

Garrettson was ordained elder by Dr. Coke at
the famous Christmas Conference in 1784. At
this Conference was present William Black, the
apostle of Methodism in the provinces of Nova
Scotia and New Brunswick. He was a sturdy

Yorkshireman, who brought the Old Country
288
SOME EARLY PREACHERS AND BISHOPS

Methodist fire to the New World. His earnest
appeal awoke a warm response in the heart of
Garrettson, who volunteered to go as a mission-
ary to those then rugged northern wilds. In
his semicentennial sermon he gives the follow-
ing account of some of his experiences in Nova
Scotia:

‘‘T traversed the mountains and valleys, fre-
quently 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-leg deep in
mud and water, frequently satisfying my hun-
ger 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 toil, for many precious souls were
awakened and converted to God.”

Garrettson continued his labors as pathfinder
of Methodism along the far-extending frontier
for nearly half a century. At length, unable
longer to endure the hardships of the itinerant
life, he was obliged to desist. He died in New
York city in 1827, in the seventy-sixth year of
his age. His ruling passion was strong in death.
In his will he made provision for the support of
a missionary preacher to carry on the work to

which he himself had devoted his life.
289
MAKERS OF METHODISM

We hold in our hand as we write a meager,
leather-covered, time-stained book, published in
Baltimore in 1810. It is Jesse Lee's Short His-
tory of the Methodistsin the New Worid. A
list of the subscribers presents such characteris-
tic Puritan names as Bezaleel and Zelotes
Fuller, Persis Stebbins, Abel Bliss, Resolved
Waterman, Comfort Fillmore, Providence Baker,
and Zadoc Lackland; also the good Dutch names
of Nieukirk, Kleinhoff, Lauderbach, and many
others which give a key to their history. In
this book the writer recites some of his own ad-
ventures as a pioneer preacher.

Jesse Lee was born in Virginia—the mother
of Presidents and of famous Methodist preach-
ers and bishops—in 1758. He was soundly
converted, under a soul-saving Methodist min-
istry, in his fifteenth year, and was soon called
of God and his brethren to join the Gospel
brigade for the conquest of the continent.
Although Southern born and_ bred, he is
perhaps best known as the Methodist apostle
of New England. While making his way
through the land where the Pilgrim Fathers
had sought freedom to worship God after the
dictates of their conscience—a privilege which
they refused to the Quakers and the Metho-
dists—he asked permission to preach in an or-

chard. His request was denied, lest he should
290

 

 
SOME EARLY PREACHERS AND BISHOPS

‘“tread the grass down.” He therefore took his
stand by the roadside, as did our Saviour and
his apostles in Galilee, and as did John Wesley
and his helpers in England, and preached out of
a full heart the glad tidings of a free salvation.
Soon after we find him preaching beneath the
famous elm on Boston Common, one of the
sacred trees of New England. Dr. Abel Stevens
thus describes Lee’s first sermon in Boston:
‘In the center of the Boston Common still
stands a gigantic elm, the crowning ornament
of its beautiful scenery. On a fine afternoon in
July, 1790, aman of middle age, of a severe but
shrewd countenance, and dressed in a style of
simplicity which might have been taken for the
guise of a Quaker, took his stand upon a table
beneath the branches of that venerable tree.
Four persons approached and gazed upon him
with surprise while he sang a hymn. It was
sung by his solitary voice. At its conclusion he
knelt down upon the table and, stretching forth
his hands, prayed with a fervor and unction so
unwonted in the cool and minute petitions of
the Puritan pulpits that it attracted the groups
of promenaders who had come to spend an even-
ing hour in the shady walks, and by the time he
rose from his knees they were streaming in pro-
cessions from the different points of the Com-

mon toward him. While he opened his small
291
MAKERS OF METHODISM

Bible and preached to them, without ‘notes,’
but with ‘the demonstration of the Spirit and of
power,’ the multitude grew into a dense mass
three thousand strong, eagerly catching every
utterance of the singular stranger, and some of
them receiving his message into ‘honest and
good hearts.’”

A spectator who heard him at or about this
time says: ‘‘ When he stood up in the open air
and began to sing I knew not what it meant. I
drew near, however, to listen, and thought the
prayer was the best I had ever heard... .
When he entered upon the subject-matter of
his text it was with such an easy, natural flow
of expression and in such a tone of voice that I
could not refrain from weeping, and many others
were affected in the same way. When he was
done, and we had an opportunity of expressing
our views to each other, it was agreed that such
aman had not visited New England since the
days of Whitefield. I heard him again, and
thought I could follow him to the ends of the
earth.”

The coldly intellectual New England temper-
ament seemed not as congenial to the germs
of Methodism as the warm-hearted sympathies
of the Southern and Middle States. After seven
months of indefatigable toil the result of Lee’s

labors was the formation of but two classes, with
292
SOME EARLY PREACHERS AND BISHOPS

an aggregate of five members. But he cheer-
fully writes, ‘‘ Glory be to God that I now be-
gin to see some fruit of my labor in this barren
part of the world.” He departed on his way to
other toils, exclaiming again: ‘‘ Glory be to God
that he ever called me to work in his vineyard
and sent me to seek and to feed the sheep of
his fold in New England. . . . The Lord only
knows the difficulties I have had to wade
through, yet hisgrace is sufficient forme; when
I pass through the fire and water he is with me,
and rough ways are smooth when Jesus bears
me in his arms.”

Amid the inclemencies of a cold and stormy
day he set out, ‘‘and,” he writes again, ‘‘ my
soul was transported with joy; the snow falling,
the wind blowing, prayer ascending, faith in-
creasing, grace descending, heaven smiling, and
love abounding.”

‘‘T have found great assistance from the Lord
of late,” he continues. ‘‘To-day I have preached
four times, and felt better at the conclusion of
my labor than I did when I first arose in the

morning. . . . I am the first preacher of our
way that has ever visited this part of the coun-
try.”

Before long the genial, happy, hymn-singing
Methodist, who preached every day, and often

several times a day wherever opportunity of-
293
MAKERS OF METHODISM

fered—in barns, kitchens, at the crossroads, by
the wayside, in schoolhouses, and sometimes in
the courthouse or more liberal village church,
where he used to light the fire and ring the
bell himself—overcame even Puritan prejudice.
The hearty singing of the joyous Methodist
hymns won their way to the hearts of the peo-
ple. Though the elders and deacons denounced
him as a heretic and an Arminian, yet the glad-
some doctrine brought comfort to souls bur-
dened with the stern theology of Calvin.

Lee’s witty repartee sometimes turned the
joke on those who attempted to interrupt or
‘‘ouy” him. ‘The pastor, and sometimes the
village lawyer or doctor, tested him with Latin
and Greek phrases. He responded in Dutch, a
knowledge of which he had picked up ‘in his
childhood. They supposed this to be Hebrew,
and retreated or took sides with him as compe-
tent to preach. But above all he was evidently
an earnest and devout man: he prayed mightily
and preached overwhelmingly.”

In a New England village an honest black-
smith kept his household confined at home ‘‘lest
they should become infected with the itinerant’s
supposed heterodoxy.” A little lad of twelve
years of age was not allowed to hear the preacher,
but was deeply impressed with the strange tales

of his work of faith and labor of love. ‘‘ He
294
SOME EARLY PREACHERS AND BISHOPS

was destined to become Lee’s greatest successor
in this very field and to do more important serv-
ices for American Methodism than any other
man recorded in its history save Asbury. Such
was Dr. Nathan Bangs’s first knowledge of
Methodism.”

The following anecdote, referred to by Dr.
Stevens, shows Lee’s cheery sense of humor.
He had been preaching in a town during the
session of the court, and had dealt rather faith-
fully with the lawyers, two of whom were dis-
posed to make merry at his expense. While
riding along to another appointment he per-
ceived them ‘‘hastening after him on horse-
back, with evident expectations of amusement.
They entered into conversation with him on ex-
temporaneous speaking. ‘Don’t you often make
mistakes?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, what do you do
with them—let them go?’ ‘Sometimes I do,’
replied the preacher, dryly; ‘if they are very
important I correct them; if not, or if they ex-
press the truth, though differently from what :
designed, why, I often let them go. For in-
stance, if in preaching I should wish to quote
the text which says, ‘‘The devil is a har, and
the father of it,” and should happen to misquote
it and say he wasa ‘‘lawyer,” etc., why, it is
so near the truth I should probably let it pass.’

The gentlemen of the bar looked at each other
295
MAKERS OF METHODISM

and were soon in advance, hastening on their
way.”

As the winter came on it was too cold and
stormy to preach under the Boston elm, and it
was almost impossible to get the use of a house,
although continuous efforts were made for four
weeks. After paying his board Lee had but
two shillings and one penny left. But, he adds,
‘Tf Tecan always have two shillings by me be-
sides paying all I owe I think I shall be satis-
fied.”

‘“No man,” says Dr. Stevens, ‘‘ of less cheer-
ful temperament could have brooked the chilling
treatment he encountered while traveling the
New England States without a colleague and
without sympathy. This solitariness in a strange
land, often without the stimulus of even perse-
cution, but rendered doubly chilling by universal
indifference or the most frigid politeness, was
one of the strongest tests of his character.”

Such faithful preaching was not without hal-
lowed results. In many of the towns and vil-
lages of New England little companies of
Methodists were formed—as at Boston, Lynn,
Needham, Providence, Pawtucket, Warren, and
Bristol. By the beginning of this century nearly
six thousand members were enrolled.

Lee continued to itinerate as far as the head

waters of the Penobscot, the Kennebec, the
296

 
 

SOME EARLY PREACHERS AND BISHOPS

Merrimac, and the Hudson, and even into the
then wilderness of Canada. For the remaining
sixteen years of his life his Conference appoint-
ments were in the South, but he was permitted
once more tovisit the scene of his early triumphs
and trials, the now flourishing circuits of New
England Methodism. Where once he was re-
ceived with coldness and disdain he was now
welcomed with heartiest good will. ‘At Mon-
mouth, where the first society was formed,” he
writes, ‘‘ they cannot get into the house.” Many,
after the service, came to the altar to give him
their handsin pledge of meeting him in heaven.
“They wept, and I could not refrain from
weeping.”

He labored on with unflagging zeal to the very
last. After preaching at a camp meeting in
Maryland he was seized with a chill, which was
followed by a fatal fever. His illness was brief,
but his end was joyous and triumphant. So
passed away, in his fifty-eighth year, one of the
most noteworthy founders of Methodism in New
England or the Middle States.

Coke and Asbury, the pioneer bishops of
American Methodism, were soon joined by noble
comrades in office and in toil. Richard What-
coat was the last of the bishops of British birth,
and but for a short time bore the honors and

endured the labors of the episcopate. He was
297
MAKERS OF METHODISM

born in Clinton, England, in 1736. He was
converted in early manhood and became class
leader and steward at Wednesbury, where the

 

BISHOP WHATCOAT.

Wesleys and Whitefield had been so bitterly
persecuted.

He accompanied Dr. Coke to America at the
close of the Revolutionary War, and throughout

a wide region administered the ordinances of
298
SOME EARLY PREACHERS AND BISHOPS

religion to a people who had been long without
an ordained minister. He traveled much with
Asbury, from Georgia to Maine, and in 1800
was elected bishop, the votes being nearly
equally divided between him and Jesse Lee. He
was the first of the American bishops to pass
away, dying in the year 1806. One who knew
him well remarks: ‘‘I think I may safely say
if I ever knew one who came up to St. James's
description of a perfect man, one who bridled
his tongue and kept in subjection his whole
body, that man was Bishop Whatcoat.”

William McKendree was the first of the heroic
band of native-born bishops of the Methodist
Episcopal Church. He was a preacher of tran-
scendent power, an ecclesiastical administrator
of almost unrivaied ability, a man of the saint-
liest character, and was the chief founder of
Methodism in the great and growing West.
Like Jesse Lee he was born in Virginia, and
about the same time, 1757. During the Revo-
lutionary War he was a volunteer in the service
of his country. He entered the army as a pri-
vate, but was soon advanced to the rank of ad-
jutant, and was present at the surrender of Corn-
wallis at Yorktown.

In 1787, under the preaching of John Easter,
famous for his soul-stirring eloquence, he was

soundly converted. Easter strongly urged him
299
 

BISHOP MC KENDREE,
SOME EARLY PREACHERS AND BISHOPS

to preach, but after a few efforts he returned
home ‘‘ fearful that he had run before he was
called.” But Bishop Asbury recognized his
innate worth, and sent forth the beardless boy
to the rugged mountain region beyond the
Blue Ridge, and through Kentucky, Tennessee,
West Virginia, Ohio, and Illinois—‘‘a region
which was being rapidly settled, with a popula-
tion as mixed in creed as Joseph’s coat was in
colors.” Within twelve years of his ordination
he became one of the foremost men of American
Methodism, and in 1808, at fifty-one, was elec-
ted fourth bishop of the Methodist Episcopal
Church. His evangelistic zeal and wise adminis-
tration did much to consolidate the growing
Methodism of the New West.

In these days of travel in Pullman cars it is
difficult to conceive the hardships and privations
of the early itinerancy. The pioneer preacher
was exposed to perils from savage beasts and
still more savage men—the hostile Indians, and
sometimes the hostile whites. Often he slept
upon the ground, with nothing but the sky and
the twinkling stars, those ‘‘ thoughts of God,”
above his head. The people themselves lived
in rude shacks, or shanties, but they were
glad to welcome the forest itinerant to their
humble homes and to share with him their

simple fare.
20 301
MAKERS OF METHODISM

McKendree was a man of magnetic eloquence
and soul-saving power. When called to preach
before the General Conference in.1808, such was
the divine unction that accompanied the word
that Bishop Asbury said at its close, ‘‘ That
sermon will make McKendree a bishop.” And
it did. Before the Conference was over he was
elected to that high office, which carried with it
only preeminence in hardship and toil.

The time had now come for the more thorough
organization of American Methodism, and Bishop
McKendree was the ecclesiastical statesman by
whom this was to be accomplished. Says Dr.
Lovejoy, ‘‘ The testimony of history will estab-
lish the truth of the statement that from 1808 till
to-day the wisdom and solidity of Methodismasa
rational, Scriptural system of evangelical propa-
gandism bear the ineffaceable impress of Wil-
liam McKendree.”

Hitherto the Annual Conferences claimed the
power to change any part of the Discipline.
Bishop McKendree saw that, to use the words
of Dr. Lovejoy, ‘‘ Unless a permanent basis be
established, and the tie that binds the various
parts together be an unvarying quantity, the
unity that is desired becomes a hopeless dream.”

With the aid of Jesse Lee, Joshua Soule, and
other wise ecclesiastical leaders, Bishop Mc-

Kendree was one of the prime movers for a
302
SOME EARLY PREACHERS AND BISHOPS

delegated General Conference, which was des-
tined to give a unity and permanency to the
legislation of Methodism. For twenty-seven
years he continued to serve with unfaltering
fidelity and unrestful toil the rapidly growing
Church, especially in the vast region of the New
West. He died in 1835, at the residence of his
brother, near Nashville, Tenn. As his spirit
passed into the skies his latest utterance was,
‘* All is well.”

Enoch George, the fifth bishop of American
Methodism, was also born in the Old Dominion,
which has given so many distinguished men to
both Church and State. Under the preaching of
the same John Easter who was the means of the
conversion of Bishop McKendree he was brought
to God. He was called of God and the Church
to preach on the frontier. He was sent by
Bishop Asbury to form a circuit in the pic-
turesque mountain region of the Catawba and
Broad Rivers in North Carolina. On the death
of Bishop Asbury, in 1816, Enoch George and
Robert Roberts were elected to carry on the
supervision of the growing Church. On account
of ill health Bishop George was unable to per-
form the prodigies of toil of his predecessors.
He was, however, a man of earnest piety, of
great simplicity of manner, a pathetic and

powerful preacher; greatly beloved in life and
303
MAKERS OF METHODISM

much lamented in death. He passed away after
twelve years of episcopal service.

Robert Richford Roberts, who was elected
bishop with Enoch George at the General Con-
ference of 1816, was born in Maryland in 1778.
Converted at the age of fifteen, he began while
yet a youth to exercise his gifts and graces for the
glory of God. He soon reached prominence, and
filled appointments in Baltimore, Georgetown,
and Philadelphia. He was the first married man
in America who was elected bishop. It was not
for worldly emolument that men accepted that
high office. The official salary being exceed-
ingly small, Bishop Roberts derived his sup-
port chiefly from a farm which he owned in
Pennsylvania, he himself, meanwhile, traveling
extensively from Maine to Mississippi. He was
eminently a good man, full of faith and the
Holy Ghost. These extensive travels and
labors he maintained for seven and twenty
years.

But time would fail to enumerate the great
and godly men who succeeded to the high office
and strenuous toil of the American episcopate.
At the General Conference of 1824 Joshua Soule
and Elijah Hedding were added to the number.
The Church went far north for one of these new
bishops. Joshua Soule was born in Bristol,

Me., in 1781, and was licensed to preach at
304
SOME EARLY PREACHERS AND BISILOPS

the early age of seventeen. With McKendree
he shared the honor of being the author of the
plan for a delegated General Conference. At
the separation of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, South, in 1844, Bishop Soule re-
mained with his Southern brethren, and con-
tinued till enfeebled by age to exercise his
episcopal functions. He was a man of superior
intellect and of great energy. He was a use-
ful, popular, and sometimes an overwhelming
preacher and an able administrator.

Elijah Hedding, elected bishop at the same
General Conference as Joshua Soule, was born
in Dutchess County, N. Y., in 1780. As a
youth, being a good scholar for the times, he
was appointed to read on Sunday afternoon one
of Wesley’s sermons to the little village com-
munity in Vermont, whither his father’s family
had removed. The conversation of a pious lady
led to his conversion and to his entering upona
ministry of great usefulness and power. After
his election as bishop he discharged with great
ability the duties of his office for nearly twenty-
eight years. He was prompt in duty, wise in
counsel, and of earnest piety. ‘‘ Anxious days
and sleepless nights and strong intercessions
with God showed his deep solicitude for the
prosperity of the churches.”

For fifty-one years he bore the toils and bur-
395
MAKERS OF METHODISM

dens of itinerancy, as elder and bishop travers-
ing the continent from Penobscot, in Maine, to
the Colorado, in Texas. He writes thus of his
labors:

‘‘T have averaged over three thousand miles’
travel a year and preached on an average a ser-
mon a day since I commenced the itinerant life.
I have never in this time owned a traveling
vehicle but have ridden on horseback, except
occasionally in winter, when I have borrowed a
sleigh, and also a few instances in which I have
traveled by public conveyance or a borrowed car-
riage. I have both labored hard and fared hard.
Until recently I have had no dwelling place or
home; but, as a wayfaring man, lodged from
night to night where hospitality and friendship
opened the way. I have traveled many a day in
summer and winter without dinner because I
had not a quarter of a dollar that I could spare
to buy it. Such are some of the difficulties the
Methodist preachers have been compelled to
encounter, especially in New England, during
the past ten years. But, notwithstanding all,
God has been with us. Revivals have spread
through all the country, and multitudes have
been added to the little and despised flock.”

This life of toil he kept up till his seventy-
first year. In his last illness he had special

revelations of the love of God. His dying testi-
306
SOME EARLY PREACHERS AND BISHOPS

mony is as follows: ‘‘I have served God more
than fifty years. I have generally had peace,
but I never saw such glory before, such light,
and such gloriousness, such beauty! O, I want
to tell it to all the world! O, had I a trumpet
voice,

«Then would I tell to sinners round
What a dear Saviour I have found!’

‘‘ For clear and strong intellect, broad and com-
manding views, administrative ability, and deep
devotion, combined with amiability and gentle-
ness, Bishop Hedding has had few equals, and
possibly no superiors, in the Church.”’

The last of the Methodist bishops whose career
we will here sketch is John Emory. He was
born in Maryland in 1789, and was converted in
his seventeenth year and joined the Methodist
Church. His father had designed him for the
study of law and he had received a thorough
academical and collegiate training. He, how-
ever, gave up worldly prospects of wealth and
fame to become a Methodist preacher. His
father strongly opposed his resolution, refused
him a horse with which to fare forth as a ‘‘ cir-
cuit rider,” and declined for two years to hear
him preach, or even to receive letters from him.

But the young itinerant enjoyed the consola-

tions of the grace of God. Theenergyand abil-
307
 

BISHOP EMORY.
SOME EARLY PREACHERS AND BISHOPS

ity which would have won him success at the
bar were devoted to the service of the Methodist
Church in some of its leading appointments
in Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, and
Washington. In 1820 he was sent as represen-
tative to the British Conference, in 1824 was ap-
pointed Book Agent with Nathan Bangs, and in
1832 was elected bishop. His faithful discharge
of the duties of this high calling was brought to
a tragical close in three short years. While rid-
ing to his home near Baltimore he was thrown
out of his carriage and was found bleeding and
insensible by the roadside, and in a few hours
he passed away.

The number of great and noble men who
reached the high office of bishop in the Metho-
dist Episcopal Church has grown so great that
we can simply give their names and dates of
their election in the following tabular list.

309
MAKERS OF METHODISM

LIST OF BISHOPS OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL

CHURCH FROM 1832.

Name. Born.

James O. Andrew.........-..005 1794
Beverly Waugh..............0. 1789
Thomas A, Morris............4- 1794
Leonidas L. Hamline........... 1797
Edmund 5. Janes............... 1807
Wevi, SOL. 5 klteers doe paonabvene 1802
Matthew Simpson.............. 1811
Osmon: C. Baker vii scoeatseersrsi 1812
Edward, Rov AmeStiicgas sictaiugeaios 1806
Francis Burns.............00005 1809
Davis: Ws Clark’. si sc0cins « soeminans 1812
Edward Thomson.............. 1810
Galvin Kingsley. «ss < seas agces 1812
John W.., Roberts's: 20: <iesecas: +s 1812
Thomas Bowman,.............. 1817
William L. Harris........0..66 1817
Randolph S. Foster............. 1820
Isaac W. Wiley..............-. 1825
Stephen M. Merrill............. 1825
Edward G. Andrews............ 1825
Gilbert Havens ss.5.x-022 ssa 1821
Jesse: Ti Pek: a isgiiigis gies scene es 1811
Henry W. Warren............. 1831
Gyms: Die HOssie's'ee a4 2 seg Hele vats 1834
John EF. Hutsti cee sua os asenses 1834
Erastus O. Haven.............4. 1820
William X.. Nind@is. oi. cccccnae 1832
John Mi Walden. .4 5: taisccccases 1831
Willard F. Mallalieu............ 1828
Charles H. Fowler..... ........ 1837
John HL Vincents asics. esennwae 1832
James N. FitzGerald............ 1837
Isaac: W.. Joyce. ccc ves ea wae 1836
John P, Newman. : 00 sco2 see a ous 1826
Daniel A. Goodsell....... ees TEYO
Charles C. McCabe............. 1836
Earl Cranstonwes <<. csaa ew new 1840
William Taylor................ 1821
James M. Thoburn............. 1836
Joseph C. Hartzell.............. 1842

Elected

Bishop.

1832
1836
1836
1844
1844
1852
1852
1852
1852
1858
1864
1864
1864
1866
1872
1872
1892
1872
1872
1872
1872
1872
1880
1880
1880
1880
1884
1884
1884
1884
1888
1888
1888
1888
1888
1896
1896
1884
1888
1896

Died.
1871
1858
1874
1865,
1876
1882
1884
1871
1879
1863
1871
1870
1870
1875

1887

1884

1881
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