Books: Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9
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Elbert Hubbard >> Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9
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In the city of Savannah, there were just five hundred eighteen people
when John Wesley was there. About half of these were degenerate sons
of aristocrats, ex-convicts, soldiers of fortune, and religious
enthusiasts--the rest were plain, every-day folk.
Pioneer people are too intent on maintaining life to go into the
abstrusities of either ethics or theology. Wesley soon saw that his
powers demanded a wider field. The experience, though, had done him
much good, especially in two ways. He had gotten a glimpse of chattel
slavery and made a remark about it that is forever fixed in
literature, "Human slavery is the sum of all villainies." Then he had
met on shipboard a party of Moravians, and was so impressed by them
that he straightway began to study German. In six weeks' time he could
carry on an acceptable conversation in that language. At the end of
the two years which he spent in Georgia, through attending the
services of the Moravians, he could read, write and preach in the
German language.
The Moravians seemed to him the only genuine Christians he had ever
seen, and their example of simple faith, industry, directness of
speech, and purity of life made such an impress upon him that
thereafter Methodism and Moravianism were closely akin.
At Savannah there were some people too poor to afford shoes, and when
these people appeared at church in bare feet they were smiled at by
the alleged nobility. Seeing this, on the following Sunday, John
Wesley appeared barefoot in the pulpit, and this was his habit as long
as he was in Georgia. This gave much offense to the aristocrats; and
Wesley also made himself obnoxious by preaching salvation to the
slaves. Indeed, this was the main cause of his misunderstanding with
the Governor. Oglethorpe considered any discussion or criticism of
slavery "an interference with property-rights."
And so Wesley sailed back to England, sobered by a sense of failure,
but encouraged by the example of the Moravians, who accepted whatever
Providence sent, and counted it gain.
The overseers of Oxford, like Oglethorpe, had no special personal
sympathy with the peculiar ideas of Wesley; but as a matter of policy
they recognized that his influence in the great educational center was
needed for moral ballast. And so his services were secured as Greek
Professor and occasional preacher.
Concerning the moral status of Oxford at this time, Miss Wedgwood
further says:
The condition of Oxford at the time of the rise of Methodism has
been too little noted among those who have studied the great
Evangelical Revival. Contemplating this important movement in its
latter stage, they have forgotten that it took its rise in the
attempt made by an Oxford tutor to bring back to the national
institution for education something of that method which was at this
time so disgracefully neglected. To surround a young man with
illustrations of one kind of error is the inevitable preparation for
making him a vehement partisan of its opposite, and in education the
influence on which we can reckon most certainly is that of reaction.
The hard external code and needless restrictions of Methodism should
be regarded with reference to what Wesley saw in the years he spent
in that abode of talent undirected and folly unrestrained.
It was to the Oxford here described--the Oxford where Gibbon and Adam
Smith wasted the best years of their lives, and many of their
unremembered contemporaries followed in their steps with issues not
less disastrous to themselves, however unimportant to others--to the
Oxford where young men swore to observe laws which they never read,
and renewed a solemn promise when they had discovered the
impossibility of keeping it--that Wesley, about a score of years after
his entrance to the University, poured forth from the pulpit of Saint
Mary's such burning words as must have reached many a conscience in
the congregation.
"Let me ask you," he said in his university sermon for Seventeen
Hundred Forty-four, "in tender love and in the spirit of meekness, is
this a Christian city? Are we, considered as a community of men, so
filled with the Holy Ghost as to enjoy in our hearts, and show forth
in our lives, the genuine fruits of that Spirit? I entreat you to
observe that here are no peculiar notions now under consideration:
that the question is not concerning doubtful opinions, but concerning
the undoubted fundamental branches (if there be any such) of our
common Christianity. And for the decision thereof I appeal unto your
own consciences. In the presence of the great God, before whom both
you and I shall shortly appear, I pray you that are in authority over
us, whom I reverence for the sake of your office, to consider (and
that not after the manner of dissemblers with God), are you living
portraitures of Him whom ye are appointed to represent among men? Do
you put forth all your strength in the vast work you have undertaken?
Let it not be said that I speak here as if all under your care were
intended to be clergymen. Not so: I speak only as if they were
intended to be Christians. But what example is set us by those who
enjoy the beneficence of our forefathers, by Fellows, Students,
Scholars, and more especially those who are of some rank and eminence?
Do ye, who are of some rank and eminence--do ye, brethren, abound in
the fruits of the Spirit, in holiness of mind, in self-denial and
mortification, in seriousness and composure of spirit, in patience,
meekness, sobriety, temperance; and in unwearied, restless endeavors
to do good to all men? Is this the general character of Fellows of
Colleges? I fear it is not. Rather, have not pride and haughtiness,
impatience and peevishness, sloth and indolence, gluttony and
sensuality been objected to us, perhaps not always by our enemies, nor
wholly without ground? Many of us are more immediately consecrated to
God, called to minister in holy things. Are we then patterns to the
rest in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity? Did we indeed enter
on this office with a single eye to serve God, trusting that we were
inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon us this ministration,
for the promoting of His glory, and the edifying of His people? Where
are the seals of our apostleship? Who that were dead in trespasses and
sins have been quickened by our word? Have we a burning zeal to save
souls from death? Are we dead to the world and the things of the
world? When we are smitten on one cheek, do we not resent it, or do we
turn the other also, not resisting evil, but overcoming evil with
good? Have we a bitter zeal, inciting us to strive sharply and
passionately with those that are out of the way? Or is our zeal the
flame of love, so as to direct all our words with sweetness, lowliness
and meekness of wisdom?
"Once more: what shall we say of the youth of this place? Have you
either the form or the power of Christian godliness? Are you diligent
in your business, pursuing your studies with all your strength? Do you
redeem the time, crowding as much work into every day as it can
contain? Rather, are ye not conscious that you waste day after day
either in reading that which has no tendency to Christianity, or in
gaming, or in--you know not what? Are you better managers of your
fortune than of your time? Do you take care to owe no man anything? Do
you know how to possess your bodies in sanctification and honor? Are
no drunkenness and uncleanness found among you? Yea, are there not
many of you who glory in your shame? Are there not a multitude of you
that are forsworn? I fear, a swiftly increasing multitude. Be not
surprised, brethren--before God and this congregation I own myself to
have been of the number solemnly swearing to observe all those customs
which I then knew nothing of, and all those statutes which I did not
so much as read over, either then, or for a long time afterwards. What
is perjury, if this is not? But if it be, oh, what a weight of sin--
yea, sin of no common dye--lieth upon us! And doth not the Most High
regard it?
"May it not be a consequence of this that so many of you are a
generation of triflers with God, with one another, and your own souls?
Who of you is, in any degree, acquainted with the work of the Spirit,
His supernatural work in the souls of men? Can you bear, unless now
and then in a church, any talk of the Holy Ghost? Would you not take
it for granted, if any one began such a conversation, that it was
hypocrisy or enthusiasm? In the name of the Lord God Almighty I ask,
What religion are ye of?"
We may hope that, even in that cold and worldly age, there was more
than one in Saint Mary's church whose conscience was awakened so to
re-echo that question that he joined with his whole soul in the prayer
with which the sermon concluded: "Lord, save or we perish! Take us out
of the mire that we sink not. Unto Thee all things are possible.
According to the greatness of Thy power, preserve Thou them that are
appointed to die!"
* * * * *
The fervor of Wesley's zeal gave offense to the prim and precise
parsons who recited their prayers with the aid of a T-square.
To them religion was a matter of form, but to Wesley it was an
experience of the heart. From the Moravians he had acquired the habit
of interjecting prayers into his sermons--from speaking to the people,
he would suddenly change, raise his eyes aloft, and speak directly to
Deity. This to many devout Churchmen was blasphemous. Of course the
trouble was that it was simply new--we always resent an innovation.
"Did you ever see anything like that?" And the fact that we have not
is proof that it is absurd, preposterous, bad.
Wesley went one day to hold evening prayers at a village church near
Oxford. His fame had preceded him: the worthy warden securely locked
the doors and deposited the key in the capacious depths of his
breeches-pocket and went a-fishing. Several old women were waiting to
attend the service, and rather than send them away, Wesley, standing
on the church-steps, read prayers and spoke. It was rather an unusual
scene, and the unusual attracts. Loafers from the tavern across the
way came over, children gathered in little groups, people who had
never entered a place of worship stopped and listened. Some laughed,
others looked serious, and most of them remained to the close of the
meeting.
Thus does everything work together for good for everybody. The warden
and his astute vestrymen thought to block the work of Wesley, and
Wesley did the only thing he could: spoke outside of the church, and
thus did he speak to the hearts of people who had never been inside
the church and who would not go inside the building. Street preaching
was not the invention of John Wesley, but up to his time no clergyman
in the Church of England had attempted so undignified a thing.
Wesley was doing what his mother had done the very year he was born.
She had preached to the people of the village of Epworth in the
churchyard, because, forsooth, the chancel was a sacred place and
would suffer if any one but a man, duly anointed, spoke there. The
woman had a message and did the only thing she could: spoke outside,
and spoke to two hundred fifty people, while the regular attendance to
hear her husband was twenty-five.
And so John Wesley had made a discovery, and that was that to reach
the submerged three-quarters, you must make your appeal to them on the
street, in the marketplaces--from church-steps. His experience on
shipboard and in America had done him good. They had taught him that
form and ritual, set time and place, were things not necessary-that
whenever two or three were gathered together in His name, He was in
their midst.
And it was in preaching to the outcasts that Wesley found himself, and
was "converted." He says, "My work in America failed because I had not
then given my heart to my Savior."
Now he got the "power," and whether this word means to his followers
what it meant to him is a question we need not analyze. Power comes by
abandonment: the orator who flings convention to the winds and gives
himself to the theme finds power.
The opposition and the ridicule were all very necessary factors in
allowing Wesley to find his true self.
He wrote to his mother telling what he was doing, and she wrote back
giving him her blessing, writing words of encouragement. "Son John
must speak the words of love on any and every occasion when the spirit
moves," she said.
John Wesley was attracting too much attention to himself at Oxford:
there came words of warning from those in authority. To these
admonitions he replied that he was a duly ordained clergyman of the
Church of England, and there was nothing in the canons that forbade
his holding services when and where he desired. And then he adds: "To
show simple men and women the way of life, and tell them of Him who
died that we might live, surely can not be regarded as an offense. I
must continue in my course." That settled it--Oxford the cultured was
not for him. He was a preacher without a pulpit--a teacher without a
school.
He saddled his horse and with all his earthly possessions in his
saddlebags traveled toward London--following that storied road which
almost every great and powerful man of England had traversed. He was
penniless, but he owned his horse. He was a horse-lover: he delighted
in the companionship of a horse, and where the way was rough he would
walk and lead the patient animal. It comes to us with a slight shock
that the Reverend John Wesley anticipated Colonel Budd Doble by
saying, "God's best gift to man--a horse!"
So John Wesley rode, not knowing where he was going or why--only that
Oxford no longer needed him. When he started he was depressed, but
after passing the confines of the town, and once out upon the highway
with the green fields on either side, he lifted up his voice and sang
one of his brother's hymns. Exile from Oxford meant liberty.
Arriving at a village he would stand on the church-steps, on a street-
corner, often from a tavern-veranda, and speak. In his saddlebags he
carried his black robe and white tippet. He could put these on over
his travel-stained clothes and look presentable. His hair was worn
long and parted in the middle; his face was cleanly shaved, and
revealed comely features of remarkable strength.
The man was a commanding figure. People felt the honesty of his
presence. The crowd might cat-call, and jeer, but those who stood near
offered no violence. Indeed, more than once the roughs protected him.
He preached of righteousness and judgment to come. He pleaded for a
better life--here and now. And so he traveled, preaching three or four
times a day, and riding from twenty to fifty miles. At London he
preached on the "heaths," and thousands upon thousands who never
entered a church heard him. That phrase, "They came to scoff and
remained to pray," is his.
Wesley's oratory was not what is known to us as "the Methodist style."
He was quiet, moderate, conversational, but so earnest that his words
carried conviction. The man was honest--he wanted nothing--he gave
himself.
Such a man today, preaching in the same way, would command marked
attention and achieve success. The impassioned preaching of Whitefield
was what gave the "Methodist color." Charles Wesley was much like
Whitefield, and was regarded as a greater preacher than his brother
because he indulged in more gymnastics--but John was far the greater
man. And so the Great Awakening began; other preachers followed the
example of the Wesleys, and were preaching in the fields and by the
roadside and were organizing "Methodist Societies." But John Wesley
was their leader and exemplar.
Neither of the Wesleys nor did Whitefield have any idea at this time
of organizing a separate denomination or of running opposition to the
Established Church.
They belonged to the Church, and these "Societies" were merely for
keeping alive the spiritual flame which had been kindled.
The distinguishing feature of John Wesley's work seemed to be the
"class" which he organized wherever possible. This was a
schoolteacher's idea. There was a leader appointed, and this class of
not more than ten persons was to meet at least once a week for prayer
and praise and to study the Scriptures. Each person present was to
take part--to stand on his feet and say something.
In this Wesley was certainly practical: "All must take part, for by so
doing the individual grows to feel he is a necessary part of the
whole. Even the humblest must read or pray or sing, or give testimony
to the goodness of God."
And so we get the circuit-rider and see the evolution of the
itinerancy. And then comes the "local preacher," who was simply a
"class leader" who had gotten "the power."
Wesley saw with a clear and steady vision that the paid preacher, the
priest with the "living" was an anomaly. To make a business of
religion was to miss its essence, just as to make a business of love
evolves a degenerate. Our religion should be a part of our daily
lives. The circuit-rider was an apostle: he had no home, drew no
salary, owned no property; but gave his life without stint to the
cause of humanity. It was Wesley's habit to enter a house--any house--
and say, "Peace be unto this house." He would hold then and there a
short religious service. People were always honored by his presence:
even the great and purse-proud, as well as the lowly, welcomed him.
All he wanted was accommodations for himself and his horse, and these
were freely given. He looked after the care of his horse himself, and
always the last thing at night he would see that his horse was
properly fed and bedded.
One horse he rode for ten years; and when it grew old and lame, his
grief at having to leave it behind found vent in a flood of tears as
he stood with his arms about its neck. Was ever mortal horse so
honored? To have carried an honest man a hundred thousand miles, and
been an important factor in the Great Awakening! Is there a Horse
Heaven? In the State of Washington they say, "Yes." Perhaps they are
right. Often before break of day, before the family was astir, Wesley
would be on his way.
* * * * *
As an argument against absolute innocency in matters of love, the
unfortunate marriage of Wesley, at the discreet age of forty-eight,
has been expressed at length by Bernard Shaw. If Wesley had roamed the
world seeking for a vixen for a wife, he could not have chosen better.
Mrs. Vazeille was a widow of about Wesley's age--rich, comely, well
upholstered. In London he had accepted her offers of hospitality, and
for ten years had occasionally stopped at her house, so haste can not
be offered as an excuse. The fatal rock was propinquity, and this was
evidently not on the good man's chart; neither did he realize the ease
and joy with which certain bereaved ladies can operate their lacrimal
glands. On the way down "The Foundry" steps at night, Wesley slipped
and sprained his ankle. He hobbled to the near-by residence of Mrs.
Vazeille. On sight of him, the lady burst into tears, and then for the
next week proceeded to nurse him.
He was due on the circuit and anxious to get away; he could not ride
on horseback, and therefore if he went at all, he must go in a
carriage. Mrs. Vazeille had a carriage, but she could not go with him,
of course, unless they were married.
So they were married, and were miserable ever afterward.
Mrs. Wesley was glib, shallow, fussy, and never knew that her husband
belonged to the world, and to her only incidentally. She took sole
charge of him and his affairs; ordered people away who wanted to see
him if she did not like their looks; opened his mail; rifled his
pockets; insisted that he should not go to the homes of poor people;
timed his hours of work; and religiously read his private journal and
demanded that it should be explained. This woman should have married a
man who kept no journal, and one for whom no one cared. As it was, no
doubt she suffered up to her capacity, which perhaps was not great,
for God puts a quick limit on the sensibilities of the stupid.
She even pulled him about by the hair before they had been married a
year; and made faces at him as he preached, saying sotto voce, "I've
heard that so often that I'm sick of it." In company, she would
sometimes explain to the assembled guests what a great and splendid
man her first husband was.
But worst of all, she took Wesley's faithful saddle-horse "Timothy,"
and hitched him alongside of a horse of her own to a chaise, with a
postboy in a red suit on his back, tooting a horn.
Poor Wesley groaned, and inwardly said, "It is a trial sent by God--I
must bear it all."
Finally the woman renounced him and left for Scotland. He then stole
his own horse from her stable, and rode away as in the good old days.
But alas! in a month she was on his trail. She caught up with him at
Birmingham and fell on his neck, after the service, explaining that
she was Mrs. John Wesley. The poor man could neither deny it nor run
away, without making a scene, and so she accompanied him to his
lodgings.
Her protests of reformation vanished in a week, and the marks of her
nails were again on his fine face. This program was kept up for
thirty-one years, with all the variations possible to a jealous woman,
who had an income sufficient to allow her to indulge her vagaries and
still move in good society. On October Fourteenth, Seventeen Hundred
Eighty-one, Wesley wrote in his Journal, "I am told my wife died
Monday and was buried on this evening."
Wesley once wrote to Asbury, "She has cut short my life full twenty
years." If this were true, one can see how Wesley would otherwise have
made the century run. However, Wesley was right: it was not all bad;
the Law of Compensation never sleeps, and as a result of his
unfortunate marriage, Wesley knew things which men happily married
never know.
John Wesley did not blame anybody for anything. Once when he saw a
drunken man reeling through the street, he turned to a friend and
said, "But for the grace of God, there goes John Wesley!" All his
biographies agree that after his fiftieth year his power as a preacher
increased constantly until he was seventy-five. He grew more gentle,
more tender, and there was about him an aura of love and veneration,
so that even his enemies removed their hats and stood silent in his
presence. And we might here paraphrase his own words and truly say of
him, as he said of Josiah Wedgwood, "He loved flowers and horses and
children--and his soul was near to God!"
The actual reason for breaking away or "coming out" is a personal
antipathy for the leader. Like children playing a game, theologians
reach a point where they say, "I'll not play in your back yard." And
not liking a man, we dislike his music, his art, his creed. So they
divide on free grace, foreordination, baptism, regeneration, freedom
of the will, endless punishment, endless consequences, conversion,
transubstantiation, sanctification, infant baptism, or any one of a
dozen reasons which do not represent truth, but are all merely a point
of view, and can honestly be believed before breakfast and rejected
afterward.
However, the protest of Wesley had a basic reason, for at his time the
State Religion was a galvanized and gilded thing, possessing
everything but the breath of life.
* * * * *
And so John Wesley went riding the circuit from Land's End to John
O'Groat's, from Cork to Londonderry, eight thousand miles, and eight
hundred sermons every year. In London he spoke to the limit of his
voice--ten thousand people. Yet when chance sent him but fifty
auditors he spoke with just as much feeling. His sermons were full of
wit, often homely but never coarse. He knew how to interest tired men;
how to keep the children awake. He interspersed anecdote with
injunction, and precept with homely happenings. He yearned to better
this life, and to evolve souls that were worth saving.
Wesley grew with the years, and fully realized that preaching is for
the preacher. "Always in my saddlebags beside my Bible and hymnal I
carried one good book." He knew history, science as far as it had been
carried, and all philosophy was to him familiar. The itineracy he
believed was a necessity for the preacher as well as for the people. A
preacher should not remain so long in a place as to become cheap or
commonplace. New faces keep one alive and alert. And the circuit-rider
can give the same address over and over and perfect it by repetition
until it is most effective.
The circuit-rider, the local preacher or class-leader, the classes,
the "love-feast," or general meeting--these were quite enough in the
way of religious machinery.
Finally, however, Wesley became convinced that in large cities an
indoor meeting-place was necessary in order to keep the people banded
together. Often the weather was bad, and then it was too much to
expect women and children to stand in the rain and cold to hear the
circuit-rider.
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