'Blest be that dear uniting love,
That will not let us part.'
While some hymns speedily became like national airs to the Methodist
heart: amongst the chief,--
'Jesus, the name high over all
In hell or earth or sky.'
They sob, they swell, they meet the spirit in its most hushed and
plaintive mood; they roll and bear it aloft in its most inspired and
prophetic moods, as on the surge of more than a mighty organ's swell.
Among the mines, and quarries, and wild moors of Cornwall, among the
factories of Lancashire and Yorkshire, in the chambers of death, in
the most joyful assemblages of the household, they have relieved the
hard lot, and sweetened the pleasant one; in other lands, soldiers,
and slaves, and prisoners have recited with what joy those words have
entered into their life. So early as 1748, when a sad cluster of
convicts, horse-stealers, highway robbers, burglars, smugglers, and
thieves, were led forth to execution, the turnkey said he had never
seen such people before. When the bellman came, as usual, to say to
them, 'Remember, you are to die to-day;' they exclaimed, 'Welcome
news! welcome news!' The Methodists had been in their prison, and
their visits had produced these marvellous effects; and on their way
to Tyburn, the convicts sang that beautiful sacramental hymn of
Charles Wesley:--
'Lamb of God, whose bleeding lore
We still recall to mind;
Send the answer from above,
And let us mercy find.
Think on us who think on Thee,
And every struggling soul release;
Oh, remember Calvary,
And let us go in peace.'
These hymns supplied battle-cries for all the scenes of open-air
aggression and warfare. When Charles Wesley himself was preaching at
Bengeworth, he was beset by a mob. He says, 'Their tongues were set on
fire by hell!' One in the crowd proposed to take him away and duck
him; he broke out into singing with Thomas Maxfield, and allowed them
to carry him whither they would. At the bridge end of the street they
relented and left him; there, instead of retreating, he took his
stand, and, with an immense congregation about him, sang,--
'Angel of God, whate'er betide,
Thy summons I obey;
Jesus, I take Thee for my guide,
And walk in Thee, my way.'
Innumerable anecdotes might be accumulated touching the glories and
triumphs of Methodist song. With all our higher love and admiration
for Isaac Watts, and our feeling that, as a sacred poet, he had a more
lofty and gorgeous wing, even a far more, tender and touching
expression, and that in some of his hymns he speaks in a manner of
strength altogether far more wonderful, nevertheless it is true that
to Charles Wesley must be given the merit of, perhaps, the most
perfect of all hymns, as the expression of Christian experience,--
'Jesus, lover of my soul.'
It is necessary to have some apprehension of the Theology of
Methodism, for the spirit of Methodism was in its theology, even as
the soul of that theology was in its hymns. It met the heart at that
point of experience at which it felt its need of God, a living God:
consciousness pervaded it everywhere. This was the central teaching of
the great evangelical reaction. How well does it compare and contrast
with the contemplations and exercises of Loyola in the solitude of the
Manreza; and also with the 'De Imitatione' of à Kempis, against which,
large as has been the regard for it, a certain instinct of the Church
has always testified. The theology of Methodism was, in one word,
Christ for the conscience. Those, happily, were not the days of
scientific theology; as a scientific statement the theology of Wesley
has justly been regarded as defective, but it is possible to be
defective in comprehensive knowledge, and yet to have a sufficiently
full and clear understanding for practical uses; even as it is
possible to work an engine well, and yet in no sense to be an
accomplished engineer. The secret of Wesley's success lay in the fact
that his was a theology for the multitude; on the one hand it was not
a forensic theory, on the other it was not rationalistic. Both are
alike unsatisfactory to the heart. There is a forensic theology, but
it is for the schools rather than for the factories or the fields.
'Wesley,' says Alexander Knox, 'regarded justification neither merely
nor chiefly as a forensic acquittal in the court of heaven, but as
implying also a conscious liberation from moral thraldom.' Indeed this
was the important point with him; consciousness, everywhere
consciousness. It is in the consciousness faith is to be wrought, as
he sings--
'Inspire the living faith,
Which whosoe'er receives,
The witness in himself he hath,
And _consciously_ believes.'
The strife ran very high upon matters where the disputants were not
substantially divided; the doctrine of personal election and
reprobation, Wesley, indeed, denounced in some of his most vehement
words; and it seemed that the imputed righteousness of Christ, and in
consequence, the doctrine of the substitution of Christ for the
sinner, paled and became ineffective in his teaching. This was
especially manifested in his controversy with the beloved and amiable
rector of Weston Favell, James Hervey, on the publication of his
'Theron and Aspasio.' Hervey says, 'The righteousness wrought out by
Jesus Christ is wrought out for all His people,' &c. Wesley replies,
with truth and force, but with needless vehemence, 'What becomes of
all other people? They must inevitably perish for ever. The die was
cast ere ever they were in being. The doctrine to pass them by has
consigned their unborn souls to hell, and damned them from their
mother's womb. I could sooner be a Turk, a deist, yea, an atheist,
than I could believe this. It is less absurd to deny the very being of
God, than to make Him an Almighty tyrant.' It was Wesley's great and
favourite faith that 'in every nation he that feareth God and worketh
righteousness is accepted of Him.' In some hymns he expresses,
however, very unreservedly the doctrine of substitution for instance--
'Join earth and heaven to bless
The Lord our righteousness;
The mystery of redemption this,
This the Saviour's strange design;
Man's offence was counted His,
Ours His righteousness divine.'
Wesley dealt always with those great truths which, because of the
depths of his own moral consciousness, man cannot hear announced
without awe. It is possible to receive Christian doctrine as only a
science, or a judicial exposition; the Calvinistic theology has too
often been merely this, but the core of Wesley's creed was personal
perception and appropriation of the work of Christ--in a word,
Consciousness. And usually his ideas were presented in a clear and
transparent style, the chief of them being salvation by faith;
_salvation_ by faith rather than _justification_ by faith. No doubt
Wesley clearly and distinctly held and preached the latter, but those
who have made this the principal theme of their religious teaching
have been usually led into a region of thought higher than was
suitable to the practical purposes of the great Methodist apostle. The
designation of his doctrine, 'Evangelical Arminianism,' has often been
charged with involving a contradiction in terms. The discussion of the
principles of the Divine government, and the Divine decrees, the
relations of fore-knowledge and predetermination in the Infinite mind,
impressions concerning the freedom of the will and the nature of
evil--such questions, it must be admitted, are more curious and
speculative than useful, or sometimes even pious. Wesley was no
metaphysician, he had little taste for such studies; and his life was
passed in a round of useful activities unfavourable to their
prosecution. Into the department of thought which implies the relation
of logic to theology, he never entered. Alike in the frame-work of his
popular creed, as we shall see in the frame-work of his Church
organization, he struck out a broad basis; breadth rather than depth
was the characteristic of his mind and work; he cared little for the
nice distinctions of philosophical refinement; his theology turned
chiefly on the responsibilities of man; his aim was to make man feel,
rather than to make him think. The Calvinistic side of theology
produces the exactly opposite effect. Wesley, naturally, insisted
strongly on the personal sanctification of the soul, this follows, of
course, that other chief and much-belaboured item of Wesleyan faith,
the doctrine of perfection. 'This,' says Alexander Knox, 'was the
perpetual bone of contention between Wesley and the whole phalanx of
Calvinist religionists.' And assuredly, that whole phalanx showed
itself to be imperfect enough in the controversy. In the story of the
strifes of good men this has a shocking pre-eminence. We cannot blame
Mr. Tyerman for presenting the various phases of the struggle, or even
for quoting passages from the innumerable abusive volumes and
pamphlets which were poured out upon Wesley, but we shall not
ourselves dwell upon these scandals. On the whole, we have in Wesley
the picture of a fine Christian temper and spirit, seldom
condescending to reply at all, and when replying, doing so in a tone
worthy even of him who could say, 'Let no man trouble me, for I bear
in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.'
That Wesley should be defamed and denounced by ungodly scoffers or
worldly bishops is not surprising, but that he should become the
object of the ribaldry and scorn and contumely of men who were
undoubtedly the children of God, is amazing. He had for long years
been scourged and lampooned in newspapers, magazines, tracts, and
pamphlets; Samuel Foote, the buffoon, had ridiculed him; and
Lavington, the merry-andrew-bishop of Exeter, had poured out upon him
volumes of ribaldry. And well says Mr. Tyerman, 'In turn Mr. Wesley
had encountered mobs, and men of letters, drunken, parsons, furious
papists, honest infidels, and others; but of all his enemies his last
were his bitterest and worst, Calvinistic Christians.' It is a mystery
to us now--and that it is so seems to prove that we have made some
advances beyond our forefathers in good sense, good taste, and good
manners, to say nothing of the higher attainments of Christian
moderation and temper--that Christian men could ever have indulged in
such envenomed speech, and that the pure air of metaphysical theology
should ever have been burdened with such exhalations and such
thunders. It is to the honour of Mr. Wesley that he never condescended
to stoop from his work to personal recrimination, and scarcely,
indeed, to personal explanation. His theology was wanting in those
more noble excursions of intelligence and experience which supply
strength to the spirit in seasons when a black night of doubt spreads
out over the soul. Concerning the ways and means of faith, of
revelation, and providence, he never attempted any solution. His mind,
in all departments of it, was characterized by a quick apprehension;
this was not accompanied by a power of lofty and sustained reflection;
the business of his life was to train as many persons as he possibly
could to habitual and orderly devotion. He taught the doctrine of the
witness of the Spirit, and personal assurance of salvation, with a
persistency which surely ought to have satisfied Toplady; but then
his teaching had this serious difference, he conditioned assurance in
the personal consciousness of the believer, while the school of
Toplady fell back more securely upon the purposes, character, and
promises of God. This makes the technical difference between the
salvation by faith, taught by the one school, and justification by
faith, taught by the other. To a profoundly experienced nature we
suppose the former is included in the latter, and furnishes sources of
satisfaction altogether wanting to the more narrow, plausible, and
popular scheme.
Hence, so much was made of the happiness arising from states of
feeling, and from the witness of the Spirit; this was to be the aim
and object of the life and heart, and was the proof of that growth in
the life of perfection which seems to reduce--as Coleridge has well
shown in a very able note to Southey--the Christian life to a
sensation: sensational assurance became the counterpart of the
doctrine of sinless perfection in this life; the one is quite
absolutely related to the other. It is not too much to say that Wesley
quite misconceived the term 'perfect' (τέλειος) as it was used by
Paul; hence it was, no doubt, that Wesley entangled himself in
contradictions, and founded the religious life very much upon certain
ascetic and sumptuary laws: 'Powder was antichristian; a ribbon became
the sign of a carnal nature, and snuff-boxes and tobacco were the very
emanations of the bottomless pit; and very innocent things became
really Babylonish.' The life prescribed by Wesley was as severe as a
monastic rule: his disciples were met every hour by something of which
they were to deny themselves, which was to be a contradiction to them,
and which they were to overcome. He insisted in the spirit of a
monastic legislator, that his preachers should always preach at four
or five o'clock in the morning. 'I exhort all those who desire me to
watch over their souls, to wear no gold, no pearls or precious stones;
use no curling of hair, or costly apparel.' 'Be serious,' was one of
his favourite injunctions; 'avoid all lightness as you would
hell-fire, and trifling as you would cursing and swearing; touch no
woman, be as loving as you will, but the custom of the country is
nothing to us.' Sometimes Wesley uses wiser words, but generally he
appears to teach that deliverance from sin implies deliverance from
human infirmities, and that it is almost inconsistent with temptation;
and this arises apparently from an unnatural interpretation of the
word 'perfect,' as we have it in the language of our Lord and in the
writings of the apostles. 'Truly,' says Coleridge, 'there is no point
at which you can arrive in this life, in which the command, "Soar
upwards still," ceases in validity or occasion.' And yet such seems to
be the doctrine of Wesley: and while in a corrupt and dissolute age
his rules fostered and trained innumerable holy and saintly lives,
they to a very large degree gave occasion for that satire and
ridicule, which indeed is not wonderful, from the scoffing world, but
which is shameful when indulged in by the pens and lips of believers.
The two great controversialists of Methodism, Calvinistic and
Arminian, were Toplady, the vicar of Broad Hembury, and the gentle
Swiss, John Fletcher, the vicar of Madely. Both argued within the
circle of Scripture. We have outlived all taste for this
pamphleteering kind of controversy. Toplady was the more scholarly and
logical, his style was the more nervous and terse: he also was not
only the more witty but the more wilful, and made his pages sparkle
with a lively wickedness which is wonderful in such a writer upon such
subjects, and especially in the writer of such transcendent hymns as
his. Fletcher was the more sentimental and rhetorical, frequently also
more characterized by a plain and earnest common sense; he was more
spiritual and devout than Toplady, nor would it be possible, we
suppose, to find a sentence in his famous 'Checks' unbecoming the
perfect Christian gentleman, and they furnished material and
ammunition for all the Wesleyan preachers, not only for that day, but
for many years after. The world and the Church, however, now demand
something more concise and firmly-textured than the essays of either,
Toplady or of Fletcher. It is satisfactory also to feel our way to
that higher plain of thought which reconciles the two. If God be
infinite consciousness and thought, can the salvation and trials of
any child of man be unknown to Him? If He be infinite character and
will, can any event happen unpermitted by Him? If He be infinite
power, can any circumstance be unordained by Him? Is He not also
infinitely amiable? It is singular how combatants fetch their weapons
from the same armoury, and tilt Scripture against Scripture; but both
are reconciled in consciousness, and the disciples of Wesley and
Toplady alike find the same reposing rest and assuring trust in the
mercy of God, through faith in the righteousness of Christ.
What shall we say of the Ecclesiastical Polity framed by Wesley? This,
first of all, that he never intended that his discipline should be
regarded as an ecclesiastical polity. Like so many of the fathers of
the Church, he founded an order; he formed a society, not a Church.
He cautions his ministers against calling the society either _the_
Church or _a_ Church. He created a broad organization, but not the
broadest. He always remembered that he was a minister and an ordained
priest of the Church of England; and it was with great reluctance that
he permitted himself to yield to those innovations which the polity of
the Church of England would have opposed; he always desired to regard
his entire fellowship as in communion with the Establishment; his
arrangements for his services were, as far as possible, for times and
seasons when no services were proceeding in the parish churches of the
neighbourhood, and for a long time he attempted to harmonise his
method of worship to the liturgic forms and devotions of the Church.
Lord King's essay on the Primitive Church made him, theoretically, an
Independent; yet, there can be little doubt that had there been a
broader, wiser, and more tolerant _régime_ in the Establishment, the
whole movement might have been included in the corporation of the
National Church; it was surely of God that it was not so. But the
Church of Rome would have known how to avail itself of such a sudden
burst of energy, as in the cases of St. Francis, of Loyola, and
others; the great leader and his disciples would for some time have
been kept in a state of ecclesiastical quarantine, but in the course
of a few years they would have been received, to pour into the mother
Church the fulness of their newly-acquired life. It was a great
evangelistic movement that Wesley originated and sustained; he
perpetually attempted to limit and curtail the ministerial powers of
his preachers; many of them, indeed, became sufficiently restive even
beneath his authority, and were quite unable or unwilling to perceive
the reason of the ecclesiastical refinements he taught and maintained.
Isaac Taylor has urged against Wesley that he founded an irresponsible
hierarchy; he says: 'On the one side stand all Protestant Churches,
Episcopal and non-Episcopal, Wesleyanism excepted; on the other side
stand the Church of Rome, and the Wesleyan Conference. This position
maintained _alone_ by a Protestant body must be regarded as false in
principle, and in an extreme degree ominous.' The position is not
fairly stated. The polity of Rome is absolutely intolerant; she not
merely has laws for conserving her own rights, which she claims as
divine, but she treats with perfect contempt and scorn all reference
to, or respect for, the rights of others. Even Frederick Faber, in his
essay on Philip Neri, in a passage of hearty eulogy on Whitefield,
consigns him to hell, notwithstanding all his usefulness, when he
says, 'St. Philip would have taught him to preach if he had been an
oratorian novice, which, unluckily for his poor soul, George
Whitefield never was.' Such is Rome. It was not so with Wesley
himself, nor has it been so with his descendants. The rubric--if so we
may call it--of Methodist polity has been stringent; too stringently,
perhaps, laws have been enacted against those turbulent spirits,
certain to emerge in all communities, endowed with a strong desire to
take their own way, and to do things merely right in their own eyes;
you are free to do so, says Wesley, but not beneath the sanctions of
our society, unless we approve the action. There has been a strong
desire to gather in and build up, but in a sense in which, perhaps,
Wesleyans have not been singular; 'they have dwelt among their own
people,' their fellowship, in spite of numerous schisms, has been one
of the most perfect, harmonious, and useful in Christendom; but this
has existed with entire respect and good-will to other denominations.
Wesley himself says, one circumstance is quite peculiar to the
Methodists, the terms upon which any person may be admitted into their
society, 'they do not impose, in order to their admission, any
opinions whatever; one conviction, and one only, is required, a real
desire to save their souls; where this is, it is enough, they desire
no more, they lay stress upon nothing else, they ask only, "is thy
heart herein as my heart? if it be, give me thy hand." Is there any
other society in Great Britain and Ireland that is so remote from
bigotry? Where is there such another society in Europe--in the
habitable world? I know none. Let any man show it me who can; till
then, let no one talk of the bigotry of the Methodists.' 'Look to the
Lord, and faithfully attend all the means of grace appointed in the
society.' Such was, practically, the whole of Methodism. So that
famous old lady, whose bright example has so often been held up on
Methodists' platforms, when called upon to state the items of her
creed, did so very sufficiently when she summed if up in the four
particulars of 'Repentance towards God, faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ, a penny a week, and a shilling a quarter.' And certainly,
beyond any other scheme or system, the organization of Methodism has
developed the power of the _pence_--that is, the power of the
people--to provide for and to sustain their religious services. The
Rev. Marmaduke Miller, in a letter to the _Nonconformist_ for May
17th, 1871, shows that the various associations in England bearing
Wesley's name, and practically working out his ideas, hold and
provide sittings for 3,500,000 people; they represent the membership
of 624,453 persons; the number of settled ministers is 3,137, and
local preachers 41,456, while the Sabbath-schools represent 1,162,423,
and the teachers 197,163. What a representation of the amazing numbers
of those who call Wesley father! The rules of the Methodist polity,
then, were devised in no insolent spirit; wisely, or unwisely, they
were framed for the conservation of order. Mr. Wesley's object in them
was certainly not ecclesiastical, as he says again, 'I have no more
right to object to a man for holding a different opinion from me than
I have to differ from a man because he wears a wig and I wear my own
hair; but if he takes his wig off, and begins to shake the powder
about my eyes, I shall consider it my duty to get quit of him as soon
as possible.' One cannot but think what might have been, had
Hildebrand been such a man as Wesley; what might the Church of England
have been had Whitgift or Laud held views so broad and tolerant as
these. In effect, his polity said, 'Come amongst us, and we will seek
to do each other good; join some other communion, the Lord be with
you; but if you attach yourself voluntarily to our society, you accept
the conditions of the society.'
The Wesleyans constitute the largest denomination in the United
States, in the form of the Methodist Episcopal Church founded by the
venerable Asbury, the friend and early disciple of John Wesley, and a
man baptized into a like spirit of indomitable endurance, and ardent,
untiring energy. But it may be questioned whether this should be
regarded as a development of Wesleyanism, or a departure from Wesley's
idea of Church government. Certainly much depends upon what we find
implied in the designation of bishop. The Wesleyan bishop in England
is called a 'superintendent;' from a Methodist's point of view the
terms are almost convertible and synonymous, and we have little doubt
that superintendent is the realization of the Scriptural idea of the
bishop--a pastor, shepherd, or overseer. More than this Wesley did not
desire his ministers to be. Had he great prescience? Was it a
far-sighted sagacity which characterized his mind? Acutely he saw the
present want, and met it. Probably he never realized the wholly
independent attitude his followers would assume in the future; and,
like the constitution of England, so the constitution of his society
grew beneath his eye; he scarcely, therefore, made provisions to meet
the demands of an independent Church, or community. He was perpetually
engaged in furnishing expedients; his ideas never seemed to rise
beyond, or to sink deeper than the present work of evangelizing the
multitude, and keeping them awake, and intent on the desire for
salvation. Hence he was utterly opposed to a permanent pastorate; his
ministers were to be perpetually moving; to some desires expressed to
himself for a longer residence, or more continued ministration of some
of his preachers, he gave his most decided negative. It is a matter
still of serious dispute between the Wesleyan and other Church
polities, whether for the health, growth, and well-being of the
individual Church, the permanent pastorate or the itinerant ministry
may be regarded as best. There is something to be said on either side.
We can have no doubt that the Wesleyan polity, while it may minister
something to the life of Churches, and give a pleasant variety, must
be a barrier to the accumulation of learning, and what is more
precious of pastoral influence; and that it offers a strong inducement
to intellectual indolence, to lean upon old resources rather than to
go on exploring new and fresh fields. The Wesleyan polity almost
denies to the minister the position of the pastor. The true pastor of
each separate little cluster in a society is the class leader; he
permanently resides in the town or village; he is familiar with the
conversions, the experiences, the joys and sorrows of each member of
the little flock. Wesley even went so far as to interdict the presence
of his ministers in the classes; and the minister is still, we
believe, as a rule, only occasionally present for the purpose of
distributing the quarterly tickets. But the immediate followers of
Wesley have now elaborated what they regard, and even term, an
ecclesiastical constitution. Its government is regulated by laws
sharply cut and defined for every emergency; they have their
Blackstone, and Coke upon Lyttleton, and probably Mr. Wesley himself
would be somewhat amazed to find such a framework of polity as the
handbook of Methodist ecclesiastical law, in Edmund Grindrod's
'Compendium of the Laws and Regulations of Wesleyan Methodism.' This
defines its 'ecclesiastical courts,' 'powers of the Conference,' of
'district meetings,' of 'local courts,' of the 'committee of
privileges,' and the nature of all its committees and institutions.
Wesleyan Methodism in England, indeed, may be defined as a
constitutional republic, but of the oligarchic order of Venice or
Florence. Its polity constitutes a civil rather than a spiritual
despotism, but it reminds us that men are not much interested in the
government of the Church of their adoption, and that Church
consciousness is very independent of Ecclesiastical organization.
Yet the entire polity of Wesley was popular, and few religions
communities have so successfully cultivated the spirit infused into
it; it was intended to meet the religious instincts of the uncared for
multitudes. Certain words of Wesley illustrate this;--a new chapel was
in the course of erection at Blackburn; Wesley was taken to see it. 'I
have a favour to ask,' he said; 'let there be no pews in the body of
this chapel, except one for the leading singers; be sure to make
accommodation for the poor, they are God's building materials in the
erection of His Church; the rich make good scaffolding, but bad
materials.' 'Observe,' he said again to his preachers, 'it is not your
business to preach so many times, and to take care of this or that
society, but to save as many souls as you can, to bring as many
sinners as you possibly can to repentance, and, with all your power,
to build them up in that holiness, without which they cannot see the
Lord.' He knew that preaching needs to be succeeded by personal
intercourse; hence he says in visiting Colchester;--'By repeated
experiments we learn that though a man preach like an angel, he will
neither collect, nor preserve a society which is collected, without
visiting them from house to house.' And this is the key to that
comprehensive and all-permeating spirit which constitutes the idea of
Methodism, at once its danger as well as its defence; to become a
Methodist of Wesley's order was to be, and is to be, looked up, and
looked after, and overlooked. It must be admitted that the system
which is so vigorously and watchfully organized, does not leave much
opportunity for the mind and soul to grow: the tutoring and training
hearts and minds to walk alone is a profound study. Nothing of this is
contemplated in the Wesleyan system; freedom of thought has not
usually fared well in the society; minds are too closely interlocked
and riveted, frequently not only with other, but with inferior minds.
It is therefore a community for the poor and the uneducated, or it is
nothing; and if it is not like the Romish system, dangerous by the
possession of an audacious hierarchy, it must be admitted that it may
become so in virtue of a system of spiritual espionage scarcely less
effective than the confessional.
Did John Wesley know human nature? Judging from the effects which have
followed his marvellous course, it would seem so; and if severe in
discipline, and intolerant to human infirmities by his system, he was
most tender and merciful, even to the aberrations and stumblings of
believers themselves. He insisted on punctilious obedience to his
rules, but it was easy to him to forgive all personal injustice to
himself; sometimes it seems almost as if he were even unable to feel
injuries, and probably this was greatly the case: his 'place was on
high, his defence the munition of rocks,' and no soul ever seems to
have been more securely shielded in 'the pavilion,' where spirits are
kept 'in secret from the strife of tongues.' The wicked woman who was
his wife, stole a number of his letters, interpolated parts, and
misrendered certain expressions; and, having been guilty at once of
theft and forgery, she, in conjunction with some of his enemies,
published them. It led to venomous and embittered language in the
newspapers concerning them. His brother, Charles Wesley, was in the
utmost consternation: he went off to Wesley, imploring him to postpone
a journey he was on the eve of taking, that he might stay in London
and defend himself against his enemies. He found his brother as calm
as _he_ was excited:
'I shall never forget,' says Miss Wesley, the daughter of
Charles, 'the manner in which my father accosted my mother
on his return home. "My brother," said he, "is, indeed, an
extraordinary man; I placed before him the importance of
the character of a minister, and the evil consequences
which might result from his indifference to it, and urged
him by every relative and public motive to answer for
himself and stop the publication. His reply was, Brother,
when I devoted to God my ease, my time, my life, did I
except my reputation? No, tell Sally (Charles's wife) I
will take her to Canterbury to-morrow."'
Glorious John had to live down many worse persecutions than this.
Ordinarily, his calm was imperturbable; and yet, divine as this often
seems, it often, too, seems related to a side of character which
almost indicates a defect in human nature. It has been alleged against
him that he was thoroughly ignorant of the nature of children, 'Break
their wills betimes,' he says; 'begin this work before they can run
alone, before they can speak plain, perhaps before they can speak at
all.' The method he adopted at Kingswood school was an illustration of
this entire ignorance of the child's nature. It was not so much a
school as a monastery, its rules were more stringent and hard than
those of a workhouse. It is no wonder that it did not succeed, and
that the whole system of the school had to undergo an entire
modification. That Wesley's design and idea in founding the Kingswood
school was benevolent, wise, and prescient, there can be no doubt, as
also that the diet was sufficient and good; nor can exception be
taken to the rule that the children should go to bed at eight, and
sleep on hard mattresses; but to rise at four in the morning! and
spend their time until five in reading, singing, meditation and
prayer! no play-day and no play-hour permitted, on the ground that 'he
who plays when he is a child, will play when he becomes a man!' When
we read of such an arrangement made for children, the question recurs,
did Wesley know human nature? Or if such a constitution might be
suitable to the human nature of monks and ascetic saints, what
knowledge does it exhibit of the child's heart? We like better to read
an anecdote told of him when at the age of seventy-three--about the
period when the letters alluded to were published. At Midsomer Norton,
when preaching in the parish church he was staying at the house of a
Mr. Bush, who kept a boarding-school. While he was there, two of the
boys quarrelled, cuffed and kicked each other vigorously. Mrs. Bush
brought the pugilists to Wesley. He talked to them and repeated the
lines--
'Birds in their little nests agree,
And 'tis a shameful sight,
When children of one family
Fall out, and chide, and fight.'
'You must be reconciled,' said he; 'go and shake hands with each
other,' and they did so. He continued, 'Put your arms around each
other's neck, and kiss each other;' and this was also done. 'Now,' he
said, 'come to me,' and taking two pieces of bread and butter he
folded them together, and desired each to take a part. 'Now,' he said,
'you have broken bread together.' Then he put his hands upon their
heads and blessed them. The two tigers were turned into loving lambs.
They never forgot the old man's blessing, and one of them, who became
a magistrate in Berkshire, related the beautiful incident in long
afterdays. We love to note those pleasant little incidents in the
man's life, and there are many such. A thousand anecdotes are told of
his benevolence and goodness, and if his life should ever be
adequately written, they will form a more entertaining regalia of
majesty, than we know in the life of any one of the fathers of the
Church.
We are not writing a life of Wesley; we leave unnoticed, therefore,
his more secret and sacred history. We have no space to devote to the
romance of Grace Murray. She was the light of the prophet's eyes; he
proposed to her in marriage, and was gratefully accepted. We read the
story from a very different point of view to Mr. Tyerman, and have
little doubt that Grace sacrificed her own feelings to the vehement
anger and interference of Charles Wesley, to the welfare of her lover,
and to the interests of the society. Wesley beautifully,
affectionately, and ingenuously said, 'the origin of the object of his
affections was no objection to him; he regarded not her birth, but her
qualifications. She was remarkably neat, frugal, and not sordid; had a
large amount of common sense, was indefatigably patient, and
inexpressibly tender; quick, cleanly, and skilful; of an engaging
behaviour, and of a mild, sprightly, and yet serious temper; and that
her gifts for usefulness were such as he had never seen equalled.' He
concluded, 'I have Scriptural reasons to marry, I know no person so
proper as this.' But the union was not to be. If we followed
implicitly the authority of Mr. Tyerman, we should express an opinion
adverse to Grace; but we prefer to ask whether such a woman as she
seems to have been was not moved to the step she took by the highest
considerations, moved by persuasions, by the tempest she was raising
in the societies, and by the not very saintly conduct of Charles
Wesley, who is described in this matter--very well it seems to us--by
Mr. Tyerman, 'as a sincere, but irritated, impetuous, and officious
friend.' Be this as it may, Wesley met her to say farewell. He kissed
her and said, 'Grace Murray, you have broken my heart.' A week or two
after she was married. The two never met again for thirty-nine years.
She long out-lived her husband; and when in London she came to hear
her son preach in Moorfields, she met her venerable lover--lover still
apparently, for the interview is described as very affecting.
Henceforth they saw each other no more, and Wesley never again
mentioned her name. In the whole transaction, so far from any shade
falling on the memory of Wesley, his admirers will, perhaps, be
pleased to find him so related to intense human feelings. No doubt the
marriage would have been an unfortunate one for the society, and the
possession of such a wife as Grace Murray would most likely have been
fatal to, or at least would have greatly interfered with, that
stupendous scheme of apostolic usefulness which he was destined to
create. Seductions of domestic life sadly derange a prophet's work.
Through long years Grace continued a course of Christian usefulness,
and lived and died eminently respected. She lies in Chinly churchyard,
in Derbyshire.
The lady who became the wife of Wesley was the roughest of termagants,
the plague and pest of her husband's existence; and she takes her
place in the foremost rank of the bad wives of eminent men, worthy to
be classed with the wedded companions of Socrates, of Albert Durer, of
George Herbert, or Richard Hooker; she was the most vicious vixen of
them all. It may be imagined, without doing any injustice to him, that
when his letters were stolen, interpolated, and forged by his wife,
for the purpose of injuring his character, the grieving spirit of the
old prophet may sometimes have said, 'Grace Murray would not have done
this.'
Wesley's mind was eminently administrative. It has often been said
that he had in him much that combined the genius of Richelieu and
Loyola--the calm, iron will and the acute eye of the one, the
inventive genius and habitual devotion of the other. He would compare
better with Washington, or the illustrious member of the Wesley family
of our own age, Wellington. His mind was eminently healthy, and may be
said to have been always awake, ceaseless in activity, sleepless in
vigilance. He intermeddled with all knowledge in many languages, and
he compiled and published libraries. He appears to have been almost
wholly indifferent to food; in sleep he was sparing; his frame was
very small, and if this appeared to be a reason against his popular
impressiveness as a preacher, it was a means of his amazing agility.
Look at the remarkable likeness of the man prefixed to the work of
Isaac Taylor; it has been likened to a shrivelled monk of the order of
La Trappe, a face in which sharpness and serenity strive for the
dominion of the features, the dark hawk-eyed intelligence with the
bland smile. The principles which illustrate Wesley's character, and
testify, not merely his greatness, but how it happened that he
achieved so much, may be well presented in some of those brief axioms
which do in fact, as we read the multitudinous events of his long
career, exhibit the pivots upon which his life turned. 'I dare no more
fret than curse or swear.' 'I reverence the young because they may be
useful when I am dead.' 'You have no need to be in a hurry,' said a
friend. 'Hurry?' he replied; 'I have no time to be in a hurry.' 'The
soul and the body,' he writes, in a characteristic letter insisting on
the observance of discipline in his society--'The soul and the body
make a man; the spirit and the discipline make a Christian.' 'Let us
work now, we shall rest by and by.' Such sentences exhibit the secret
of his ubiquitous activity and his power; and such characters are
usually cheerful. A glow of quiet, kindly humour often lightened his
speech, sometimes sharpening into quiet satire. Many anecdotes
illustrate both these attributes.
At eighty he appeared to have the sprightliness of youth, and moved
about like a flying evangelist. Although so clear-sighted a man, he
was too great by far for the epithet 'shrewd.' If people who make
mistakes in judging of character because of their own want of judgment
become suspicious, the fault is chiefly theirs. Wesley was seldom
mistaken in his judgment of particular persons; Charles was often
mistaken. Wesley himself says, 'My brother suspects everybody, and he
is continually imposed upon; but I suspect nobody, and I am never
imposed upon.' Again and again we are reminded how much he lived in an
atmosphere of continual quiet. 'I do not remember,' said the happy old
man, when at the age of seventy-seven, 'I do not remember to have felt
lowness of spirits for one quarter of an hour since I was born.' Of
course it is to be presumed he means that causeless depression which
is usually the result of indolence. At the age of eighty-six he
writes, 'Saturday, March 21st, I had a day of rest, only preaching
morning and evening.' We have seen that in his first days he was not a
radiant and cheerful man; but through his long sunset we know not
where to find such another instance of active spiritual brightness. He
was a serenely happy old man. Sometimes he seems to us as if incapable
of the feeling either of blame or praise, contempt or homage. There
was great strength, as there ever is, in his clearness and stillness
of spirit. Genius is so vague an epithet and quality that we know not
how either to apply it to him or to deny it; but so far as it
represents soul and imagination, great breadth and depth and height of
soul or feeling, it was certainly denied him. On the other hand, he
had a judgment most clear, an apprehension most quick and vivid, and
an enthusiasm as little tainted by fanaticism as any great Christian
leader since the days of the apostle Paul. Reformer as he was, he was
essentially conservative.
As is usual in most religious orders, Popish or Protestant, his spirit
has survived in his society, and the shadow of Wesley falls wide and
far. He lived through amazing changes of opinion with reference to
himself, and before he died, from being one of the most abused and
execrated of men, he certainly was one of the most revered. No foe had
been more rancorous and unjust than Lavington, Bishop of Exeter;
Wesley lived to unite with him in the ordinance of the Lord's Supper
in his own cathedral. He writes, with no bitterness of the man who had
with such bitter ribaldry abused him, 'I was well pleased to partake
of the Lord's Supper, with my old opponent, Bishop Lavington. Oh! may
we sit together in the kingdom of our Father.' At Lewisham he dined
with the eminent Dr. Lowth, Bishop of London. On proceeding to dinner
the Bishop refused to sit above Wesley at the table, saying, 'Mr.
Wesley, may I be found at your feet in another world.' Wesley objected
to take the seat of precedence; but the learned prelate obviated the
difficulty by requesting as a favour that Wesley would sit above him
because his hearing was defective, and he desired not to lose a
sentence of Wesley's conversation. It is known that the king had a
great respect for him; and it is to this most probably Wesley refers,
when writing to one of his preachers, advising him to stand his ground
against the vehement opposition of the Bishop of the Isle of Man, he
says, 'I know pretty well the mind of Lord Mansfield, and of _one_
that is greater than he.' In his latter days his movements to and fro
in the country became ovations; not merely did thousands gather to
hear him preach, the streets of towns were lined to look upon him, and
the windows were thronged as he passed along. While in Yorkshire, we
read of cavalcades of horses and carriages formed to receive and
escort him on the way. At Redruth, as he preached in the market place,
the congregation not only filled the windows, but sat on the tops of
the houses. Assuredly, as often as he had been 'persecuted, he was not
forsaken;' he did not die of Crucifixion, but he felt no elation of
spirit, and we see him still the same man that he had been in the
widely different circumstances of cruel and unjust misrepresentation.
It is wonderful to think that at nearly ninety years of age he could
continue to make any effort to preach, but he did so, and he continued
as a tower of strength to the companies he had formed and called
together. But he outlived most of his early contemporaries, friends
and foes. He stood in the pulpit of St. Giles's, in London; he had
preached there fifty years before, prior to his departure for America.
'Are they not passed as a watch in the night?' he writes. Old families
that used to entertain him had passed away. 'Their houses,' says he,
'know neither me nor them any more.' His later letters show that
fervid sentiment for woman known only to loftiest minds and hearts;
this again is entwined with beautiful simple regards for children.
When he ascended the pulpit of Raithby Church, where he was often
allowed to preach, a child sat in his way on the stairs, he took it in
his arms and kissed it, and placed it tenderly on the same spot. Crabb
Robinson heard him at Colchester, he was then eighty-seven, on each
side of him stood a minister supporting him; his feeble voice was
barely audible. Robinson, then a boy, destined to enter into his
ninety-second year, says, 'It formed a picture never to be forgotten.'
He goes on to say, 'It went to the heart, and I never saw anything
like it in after life.' Three days after he preached at Lowestoft, and
there he had another distinguished hearer, the poet Crabbe. Here,
also, he was supported into the pulpit by a minister on either side;
but what really touched the poet naturally and deeply, was Wesley's
adaptation and appropriation of some lines of Anacreon. The poet
speaks of his reverent appearance, his cheerful air, and the beautiful
cadence with which he repeated the lines:--
'Oft am I by women told,
Poor Anacreon, thou grow'st old;
See, thine hairs are falling all,
Poor Anacreon, how they fall.
Whether I grow old or no,
By these signs I do not know,
By this I need not to be told,
"Tis _time to live_ if I grow old."'
In 1790 he gave up keeping his accounts; his last entry--exceedingly
difficult to decipher--is characteristic: 'For upwards of eighty-six
years (meaning, of course, rather, sixty-eight, _i. e._, since he came
to have money of his own) I have kept my accounts exactly. I will not
attempt it any longer, being satisfied with the continual conviction
that I save all I can, and give all I can; that is, all I have. July
16, 1790.' His benevolence indeed was excessive; and Samuel Bradburn
says, 'He never relieved poor people in the street but he either took
off or removed his hat to them when they thanked him.'
The story of the old man's approach towards the gates of the celestial
city is very beautiful, and has often been told. His last sermons are
certainly among his best; the last sermon he printed, on 'Faith the
evidence of things not seen,' was the last he ever wrote, and was
finished only six weeks before his death. It shows how his mind
sustained the altitude of highest power when bordering upon ninety
years of age; it shows also how the dear old man was preening his
wings for a speedy flight. We suppose the last letter he wrote was to
William Wilberforce, on the abolition of slavery--short, but full of
strength--giving to the apostle of freedom his benediction. 'If God be
for you,' he writes, 'who can be against, you? O! be not weary in well
doing! Go on, in the name of God, and in the power of His might!'
It was in the City-road that exhausted nature gave way, unable to bear
any more. And what a death it was! He was, indeed, several days in
dying, but there was no pain, only exhaustion; in his wanderings he
was preaching or attending classes, and singing snatches from some of
his brother's, and from Watts's hymns; but he was half in heaven
before he left the earth. His last strain of song was--
'To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
Who sweetly all agree;'
but his voice failed, and gasping for breath he said, 'Now we have
done, let us go!' Friends crowded round his bed, and amidst their
words of comfort and love he was passing away. There was no conflict;
only once he rose, and in a tone almost supernatural, exclaimed, 'The
best of all is God is with us!' His brother's widow tenderly
ministered to him; he tried to kiss her, saying, 'He giveth his
servants rest!' Then he repeated his thanksgiving, 'We thank thee, O
God, for these and all Thy mercies; bless the Church and King, and
grant us truth and peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord, for ever and
ever.' He paused a little; then he cried, 'The clouds drop fatness!'
Then another pause, 'The Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is
our refuge!' Eleven persons were standing round his bed as he said
'Farewell,' his last word, at ten o'clock, Wednesday, March 2nd, 1791.
'Children,' said John Wesley's mother, 'as soon as I am dead, sing a
song of praise!' As soon as Wesley died, his friends round his dead
body raised their voices in a hymn, then knelt down and prayed. He was
buried behind the chapel in the City-road, on the 9th of March. So
great was the excitement created by his death, that he was buried at
five o'clock in the morning; before this he had been laid in a kind of
state. Thus Samuel Rogers, the poet, saw him. He says, 'As I was
walking home one day from my father's bank, I observed a great crowd
of people streaming into a chapel in the City-road. I followed them;
and saw laid out upon a table the dead body of a clergyman in full
canonicals, his grey hair partly shading his face on both sides, and
his flesh resembling wax. It was the corpse of John Wesley, and the
crowd moved slowly and silently round and round the table, to take a
last look at that most venerable man.'
John Wesley appears to have been one of the most faultless of mortals:
some of his followers claim for him a rank little short of perfection;
and certainly few for whom such a claim is made, could sustain it so
well. He nevertheless commands high admiration rather than passionate
affection. The sapling he planted has struck its roots far and wide,
still true to the spirit of its illustrious planter, his work has
resulted in a great organization, rather than in a great _soul_. We
have seen that the proportions of Wesleyanism in America are much more
magnificent than in England. English Wesleyanism has narrowed its
boundaries by making the sermons of its founder its legal creed; it is
not so in America, there the Methodists have accepted his fundamental
idea, while they have given room and verge enough for the soul to
grow. Sometimes, beyond all question, Wesley himself was occupied by
the consideration of the shape and the attitude his gigantic society
would assume in future years; but he writes distinctly--'I do not, I
will not, concern myself with what will be done when I am dead; I take
no thought about that.' His was an ever-growing, keenly penetrating,
and widely observant mind, and we cannot but think that he would have
so modified his organization and adapted his discipline, that the
immense institution he founded would have been saved from many of its
ruptures and schisms, and have comprehended a still more extensive
operation than it acknowledges at present. We have no space to enter
into a comparison between American and English Wesleyanism; enough
that the transatlantic child has far outstripped the English parent.
In England, indeed, several powerful offshoots, all, it seems to us,
comprehensible within Wesley's own idea, have divided the field of
labour, which he, perhaps, would have occupied by his organization
alone. But what a variety of sects regard him as their father: the
Primitive Methodists, the Bible Christians, the Wesleyan Association,
the New Connexion, and the Free Methodists; so that, regarding the
immense Church of America, the old Conference of England, and all its
offshoots, it is not too much to say that no single man, in the
history of the Church has ever been the father of such a progeny, so
many are those who in their temple and services are anxious that the
'shadow of "Wesley" passing may overshadow some of them.' In some
particulars, although its numerical strength has ever gone on
increasing, Wesleyanism has not grown since the days of its founder.
Creating such a hymnology as that of Charles Wesley, the glory and
beauty of Methodism, we do not know that since his time it has ever
written a single hymn which has become the darling and the property of
the Church. It has produced in England few Christian poets, no great
hymn writers; certainly none to take place by the side of the lyrists
of its early days. It was born in missionary fervour, and baptized
into the missionary spirit; it has performed abroad a good and
admirable work. To it greatly it is due that the Fiji Islanders, a
race of cannibals, have ceased from their horrible manners and
customs, and have approached the confines of civilization; but
Wesleyanism has produced no great missionaries, and boasts of no vast
achievements like those which are the heraldry of some it would be
easy to name. It has no literature; it has done nothing for
philosophy, with perhaps the exception of the metaphysical shoemaker,
Samuel Drew; with the single exception of Richard Watson it has done
nothing in scientific theology; here and there scholarly men like the
learned Adam Clarke, Spence Hardy, or the recently departed Etheridge,
meet us, but the history of the literature of Methodism would present
only a poor scroll. There must be some reason for this, although we
are not now disposed to inquire where it is to be found; we simply
state a fact. Nor do those who are the immediate followers of Wesley
occupy the fields of labour Wesley prescribed; we apprehend that
Primitive Methodists and Bible Christians would receive the venerable
Wesley's special benediction, and be regarded by him as carrying
forward most efficiently his labours and intentions. Perhaps, if it
were possible for the English Conference to adopt some of the
principles of the American Conference, this great religious
corporation might soon enlarge its field and sphere, so that even
Wesley himself might seem to be the subject of a mighty resurrection.
As time advances, the point of view changes from whence a great man
may be most distinctly seen; as the trees are removed which interfered
with the prospect, so prejudices which prevented due appreciation are
modified. If the subsequent ages do not substantially alter their
verdict, yet so much is added to, or subtracted from impressions,
either by a larger catholicity of judgment or by the accumulation of
additional facts, that new portraits and fresh and more accurate
appreciations are demanded. Ours has been called especially the age of
resurrections: beyond all former times it is the age in which men have
industriously 'garnished the sepulchres of the prophets,' and Wesley's
tomb has not been suffered to fall into ruin; many a loving Old
Mortality re-cuts his name on the stone; and recently, especially,
many able hands have set themselves to the task of faithful and
admiring delineation of the features of the man and his work. Miss
Wedgewood's interesting little volume, if founded upon no additional
information, shows the growing disposition in members of other
Churches to do him substantial justice. As a history of the great
evangelical reaction and revival, her work is inadequate, and we
question very much whether she has qualified herself, either by
sufficient sympathy or sufficient knowledge, to fulfil the
requirements of the larger and more comprehensive title of her work.
Mr. Tyerman's volumes constitute by far the most exhaustive, as they
are certainly the bulkiest, and from many points of view, the most
interesting of the lives of Wesley. He has industriously ferreted out
and brought together a great deal of unpublished or unconnected
material, although much material to which he might have found access
still remains unexamined, acquaintance with which would probably have
modified some of his judgments. The author does not aim at any
remarkable melody of style, philosophic disquisition, or even personal
portraiture; his work is simply an Index Rerum about Wesley. Mr.
Tyerman's judgment is usually characterized by great clearness and
good sense; his pen seems to be always governed by the desire to be
fair and impartial, and for the first time our libraries receive a
full and comprehensive memoir of the great religious teacher and
ecclesiastical statesman, of a life as transcendently above ordinary
lives in its incessant and immeasureable activity, as it was
protracted beyond them in its period of service. We suppose that those
readers who desire a philosophy of Methodism, will still turn to the
pages of Isaac Taylor; and those who desire to read a charming story,
will still find most refreshment in the pages of Robert Southey, or in
the more recent glowing collection of anecdotes in Dr. Stevens's
'History of Methodism.'