Wesley always insisted on judging religion by the most severely
practical tests. Life was one test, and he mistrusted profoundly
a religion which did not fill life or its possessor with
gladness and strength. But he knew that death, with its mystery
and loneliness, was the last and sorest test of religion. Did
the religion he preached make that last darkness luminous? Did
it put songs on dying lips and gladness in dying hearts? “The
world,” wrote Wesley, “may not like our Methodists, but the
world can not deny that they die well,” and the religion which
teaches men to die well may surely find in that fact its best
credentials.--W. H. FITCHETT, “Wesley and His Century.”
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