Kingswood.--Grimy colliers.--The shocking thing is
done.--A beautiful church.--From 200 to
20,000.--John Wesley shocked.--Drawing lots.--To
be or not to be.--To be.--Mr. Wesley gets over the
shock.--George Whitefield's "good-bye" to the
colliers.
LONG, long ago, before all this happened that I have been telling you,
there was a forest near Bristol where the kings of England used to hunt,
Kingswood it was called. But at the time of which I write, most of the
trees had been cut down; a great many coal mines had been dug, and the
people who lived round about and worked in the mines were a wild and
wicked lot. They had no churches, and those in Bristol were three or
four miles away.
Surely, Mr. Whitefield thought, these people ought to have the gospel of
Jesus Christ preached to them; they have no church, it cannot be wrong
to preach to them in the open air. So, one Saturday in this year, 1739,
Mr. Whitefield set off to Kingswood. It was a cold winter's day, but his
heart was warm inside with love for these poor neglected colliers, and
he soon got warm outside with his long walk.
When he reached Kingswood he found an open space called Rose Green,
which he thought was just the place for a service. Standing on a little
mound which did for a pulpit, he commenced to preach; and surely that
was the grandest church in which a Methodist minister ever held a
service. The blue sky of heaven was his roof, the green grass beneath
him the floor; and as Mr. Whitefield stood in his FIRST FIELD PULPIT,
his thoughts went back, down the ages, to the dear Master whose steps he
was seeking to follow--the Preacher of Nazareth, whose pulpit was the
mountain-side, and whose hearers were the publicans and sinners. Two
hundred grimy colliers stood and listened to that earnest young
preacher.
Mr. Whitefield continued his visits to Kingswood; the second time,
instead of two hundred there were 2,000 eager listeners. The next time
over 4,000 came to hear; and so the numbers went on increasing until he
had a congregation of 20,000.
Once, after he had been preaching, he wrote this: "The trees and the
hedges were all in full leaf, and the sun was shining brightly. All the
people were silent and still, and God helped me to speak in such a loud
voice that everybody could hear me. All in the surrounding fields were
thousands and thousands of people, some in coaches and some on
horseback, while many had climbed up into the trees to see and hear."
As Mr. Whitefield preached, nearly all were in tears. Many of the men
had come straight from the coal-pits, and the tears that trickled down
their cheeks made little white gutters on their grimy faces. Then, in
the gathering twilight, they sang the closing hymn, and when the last
echoes died away in the deepening shadows, Mr. Whitefield felt how
solemn it all was, and he, too, could hardly keep back the tears.
Mr. Whitefield soon found there was more work at Kingswood than he could
do alone, so he wrote and asked Mr. John Wesley to come and help him.
Being very _proper_ sort of clergymen, John and Charles Wesley could not
help thinking it a dreadful, and almost a wrong thing to preach anywhere
but in a church, or, at any rate, in a room; and for some time they
could not decide what to do.
They asked the other members at Fetter Lane what they thought about it;
some said Mr. John ought to go, and some said he ought not. So at last
they decided to draw lots. You know what that is, don't you? If you look
in your Bible, in Acts i. 26, you will see that the disciples drew lots
when they wanted to make up their number to twelve, after wicked Judas
had killed himself. And in John xix. 24, you can read how the soldiers
cast lots for the coat that had belonged to Jesus, which they took away
after they had crucified Him. And in many other places in the Bible we
read about people casting lots.
So the society at Fetter Lane cast lots, and it came out that Mr. John
Wesley should go. Everybody was satisfied after this, and even Mr.
Charles, who more than any of the others had objected, now felt that it
was right. So Mr. John set off for Bristol and joined his friend.
The first Sunday he was there he heard Mr. Whitefield preach in the open
air, and this is what he wrote about it: "It seemed such a strange thing
to preach in the fields, when all my life I had believed in everything
being done properly and according to the rules of the Church. Indeed, I
should have thought it almost a sin to preach anywhere else."
However, because of the lots, he felt it was all right; and he was still
more sure of this when he saw the crowds, who would never have gone into
a church, listening so intently to God's Word. He very soon got used to
open-air preaching, and by and by Mr. Whitefield left the work at
Kingswood to him.
When the people heard that Mr. Whitefield was going to leave them, they
were very, very sorry; and the day he rode out of Bristol, a number of
them, about twenty, rode on horseback with him, they could not bear to
say "good-bye."
As he passed through Kingswood, the poor colliers, who were so grateful
for all he had done for them, came out to meet him, and told him they
had a great surprise for him. They had been very busy collecting money
for a school for poor children, and now they wanted their dear friend,
Mr. Whitefield, to lay the corner-stone of their new building.
He was surprised and delighted; and when the ceremony was over, he knelt
down and prayed that the school might soon be completed, and that God's
blessing might ever rest upon it; and all those rough colliers bowed
their heads, and uttered a fervent "Amen."
At last "good-bye" was said to the dear minister who had brought them
the glad tidings of salvation, and leaving them in charge of Mr. Wesley,
George Whitefield rode away.
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