WESLEY AS A REFORMER.
SLAVERY.
THOSE moral reforms which have shaken the nations and in some cases
revolutionized governments were scarcely known in the days of Wesley. He
saw the coming storm and blew a trumpet-blast which gave no uncertain
sound. In some of these reforms he was a hundred years in advance of his
time.
[Illustration: WESLEY'S TEA-POT.]
[Illustration: WESLEY'S BIBLE AND CASE.]
Slavery, in Wesley's time, was strongly supported by the English
government. She had enriched herself from the African slave trade. Her
great maritime cities were built on the bones, sinews, and flesh,
cemented by the blood, of oppressed bondmen. To oppose slavery was to
oppose the government. Wesley met this gigantic evil with Christian
courage. What was true of England was also true of her colonies. He
united with Sharp, Clarkson, Wilberforce, and others to oppose the evil.
He represented the slave trade as "that execrable sum of all villainies,
commonly called the slave trade." American slavery he declared was "the
vilest that ever saw the sun." No addresses delivered on the subject,
during the days of the greatest antislavery excitement, exceeded in
severity those which fell from the lips and were produced by the pen of
John Wesley. His _Thoughts on Slavery_ was the keynote of the movement.
Wesley's last letter, written only four days before his death, was
addressed to Wilberforce, urging him to persevere in the work. It is as
follows:
LONDON, February 26, 1791.
DEAR SIR: Unless the divine Power has raised you up to
be an _Athanasius contra mundum_ (Athanasius against
the world), I see not how you can go through your
glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable
villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England,
and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for
this very thing, you will be worn out by the
opposition of men and devils. But "if God be for you,
who can be against you?" Are all of them together
stronger than God? O, "be not weary in welldoing." Go
on, in the name of God, and in the power of his might,
till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw
the sun) shall vanish away before it.
Reading this morning a tract written by a poor
African, I was particularly struck by this
circumstance--that a man who has a black skin, being
wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no
redress; it being a law, in all our colonies, that the
oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What
villainy is this!
That He who has guided you from your youth up may
continue to strengthen you in this and all things is
the prayer, dear sir, of
Your affectionate servant,
JOHN WESLEY.
He represents the slave trade as exceeding in barbarity whatever
Christian slaves suffered in Mohammedan countries.
Whitefield's letter to Wesley, in 1751, is a clear defense of slavery in
the colonies. He quotes Abraham, who had slaves "bought with his money"
and "born in his house." The same argument was employed in later years.
Whitefield added to his approval of the slave trade the fact that he
became himself a slaveholder. At the time of his death, in 1770, he was
the owner of seventy-five slaves, who were connected with his Orphan
House plantation, near Savannah, Ga. It is not surprising that God
should have swept the whole concern, by fire and flood, from the face of
the earth.
"Let it be noted," says Mr. Tyerman, "that besides all his other honors
John Wesley, the poor, persecuted Methodist, was one of the first
advocates on behalf of the enthralled African that England had, and
that, sixty years before slavery was abolished in the dominions of Great
Britain, he denounced the thing in the strongest terms it was possible
to employ." Mr. Wesley's _Thoughts on Slavery_, an octavo of fifty-three
pages, issued in 1774, did more to awaken England to the horrors of the
African slave trade than any other work on the subject. The writer says,
"No more severe arraignment of slavery than this was ever written." This
American scourge, through the influence of Wesley's early American
preachers, who caught their inspiration from his _Thoughts_, felt the
force of his burning words until that form of slavery, which he declared
to be "the vilest that ever saw the sun," was a thing of the past. For
two hundred and more years it drifted down, gradually, like other forms
of barbarism, into the clear light of a better civilization, to be
finally put to death by the Gospel of Methodism. It is true that _Uncle
Tom's Cabin_ did much, but Wesley's _Thoughts_ prepared the way for this
wonderful book. Mr. Wesley must ever be known as the man through whose
influence slavery found a grave, from which Heaven forbid it should ever
have a resurrection!
TEMPERANCE.
In regard to the temperance reform Mr. Wesley was as fully pronounced as
on the subject of slavery. Liquor drinking was practiced by all classes,
from the archbishop to the meanest street scavenger. Ministers by the
hundred drank to intoxication, and in their drunken sprees would head
mobs in their assaults on Wesley and his helpers. Wesley thundered away
at liquor selling and drinking like a modern prohibitionist. Take the
following from one of his sermons as an example:
Neither may we gain by hurting our neighbor in his
body. Therefore we may not sell anything which tends
to impair his health. Such is eminently all that
liquid fire called drams of spirituous liquors. It is
true they may have a place in medicine--may be used in
some bodily disorders--although there would rarely be
occasion for them were it not for the unskillfulness
of the practitioner. Therefore such as prepare and
sell them only for this end may keep their conscience
clean. But who are they who prepare and sell them only
for this end? Do you know ten distillers in England?
Then excuse these. But all who sell them in the common
way, to any that will buy, are poisoners in general.
They murder his majesty's subjects by wholesale;
neither do their eyes pity or spare. They drive them
to hell like sheep. And what is their gain? Is it not
the blood of these men? Who, then, would enjoy their
large estate and sumptuous palaces? A curse is in the
midst of them. A curse cleaves to the stones, the
timbers, the furniture of them. The curse of God is in
their gardens, their walks, their groves; a fire that
burns to the nethermost hell! Blood, blood, is there!
The foundation, the walls, the roof, are stained with
blood! And canst thou hope, O man of blood, though
thou art "clothed in scarlet and fine linen, and
farest sumptuously every day"--canst thou hope to
deliver thy fields of blood to the third generation?
Not so! There is a God in heaven; therefore thy name
shall be blotted out. Like as those whom thou hast
destroyed, body and soul, thy memory shall perish with
thee.[M]
He introduced into his Discipline a rule prohibiting the "buying or
selling of spirituous liquors, or drinking them, unless in cases of
extreme necessity." He went for "prohibiting forever, making a full end
of that bane of health, that destroyer of strength, of life, and
virtue--distilling." These are his own words. He was a prohibitionist in
principle, and in this respect was in advance of many would-be
temperance men of these times. To one of his preachers he says: "Touch
no dram. It is a liquid fire. It is a sure, though slow, poison. It saps
the very spring of life."
TOBACCO.
Mr. Wesley sought a reformation on the tobacco question. He believed
that the use of the weed was unchristian. He exhorts his people: "Use no
tobacco. It is an uncleanly and unwholesome self-indulgence; and the
more customary it is the more resolutely should you break off from every
degree of that evil custom. Let Christians be in this bondage no longer.
Assert your liberty, and that all at once; nothing will be done by
degrees."[N]
Such were the teachings of John Wesley on these subjects--teachings
which we regard as very remarkable for those times, and fully up to the
present.
JOHN WESLEY AND JOHN HOWARD MEET.
In 1787 Mr. Wesley met John Howard, the father of prison reform. He
says: "I had the pleasure of a conversation with Mr. Howard, I think one
of the greatest men in Europe. Nothing but the almighty power of God
can enable him to go through his difficult and dangerous employment. But
what can harm us if God be on our side?" He says again: "God has raised
him up to be a blessing to mankind."
FEMALE PREACHERS.
It is true that Wesley did not believe that female preaching was
authorized by the New Testament, except under extraordinary
circumstances. He tells Sarah Crosby that he thinks her case rests on
her having an "extraordinary call." He was persuaded, also, that every
local preacher had a similar call. If it were not so, he could not
countenance their preaching at all. "Therefore I do not wonder if
several things occur therein which do not fall under ordinary rules of
discipline. St. Paul's ordinary rule was, 'I permit not a woman to speak
in the congregation;' yet in extraordinary cases he makes a few
exceptions, at Corinth in particular."
Mrs. Crosby said: "My soul was much comforted in speaking to the people,
as the Lord has removed all my scruples respecting the propriety of my
acting thus publicly."
"I think you have not gone too far," said Wesley, though she had
preached to hundreds. "You could not well do less. All you can do more
is, when you meet again tell them simply: 'You lay me under a great
difficulty. The Methodists do not allow of women preachers; neither do I
take upon me any such character. But I will just nakedly tell you what
is in my heart.' I do not see that you have broken any law. Go on,
calmly and steadily." She obeyed, and went on till death. Others
followed in the footsteps of Sarah Crosby. Mrs. Fletcher preached, and
Hester Ann Rogers really did the same.
It is true that female preaching was never sanctioned by the Wesleyan
Conference, but it was substantially practiced to the end of Wesley's
life. He broke the bands which had bound women, and which in many
Churches bind them still, and allowed her to be a public advocate of
spiritual religion--to tell what great things God had done for the soul.
Speaking of Susannah Wesley, a recent writer of the Congregational
Church says: "The Methodist Church owes its system of doctrine quite as
much, I think, to Susannah Wesley as to her illustrious son. To the
instruction of a woman she added the logic of a gownsman and the love of
a saint. Finer letters were never written. It is not to be wondered at
that Methodists have been pioneers in the enfranchisement of female
speech, that they have believed in it and practiced it from the first.
They would have disgraced their origin otherwise."
It will be seen that Methodism has inaugurated, really, all the great
moral reforms of the last hundred and fifty years. The great missionary
movement, which has sent evangelistic agencies into all the earth, had
little or no life when Methodism was born. Since that time, what hath
God wrought!