CHAPTER XVIII.
Good out of evil.—What Mr. Wesley preached.—"Hurrah!"—In the prison.—How the wicked Methodists spoiled the woollen trade.—Emilia Wesley says strong things.—In the sunlight.
KNOW you will have thought it very unkind of the clergymen not allowing such a good man as Mr. Wesley to preach in their churches; and so it was, very unkind, and very wrong. These clergymen thought so themselves after a time; but God often uses the wrong doings of people to bring about a great good, and He did so in this case.
Perhaps if the churches had not been closed against Mr. Wesley and Mr. Whitefield they would never have preached in the open air, and thousands of people, who would not go to a church, might never have heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
You boys and girls love father and mother and home, do you not? And when you have been away at day-school or boarding-school, oh! how glad you always are to get to them again. Well, in the same way we all come from God; He is our Father, and heaven is our home, and all of us, deep down inside of us, have a longing to go home again some day. But Adam and Eve had to be punished for their disobedience; and the punishment was that they and all that were born after them should die, and never go back to home and to God. This was a terrible punishment, was it not? But you know how Jesus Christ, God's Son, in His great love and pity for us said He would come down from heaven, and be a man on earth; that He would go through life just as we have to do, and at last die. Then God said if His dear Son did this, and lived on earth a life that should be a beautiful copy for men and women and boys and girls to follow; and if the people would believe on Him and follow His example, God would forgive them, and they should go back to Him, their Father, and to heaven their home.
All this Mr. Wesley explained to the people, and told them if they believed this and loved and followed the Saviour that died for them, they would always be happy, and God would give them His own peace, the peace He has promised to those that love Him.
One wonders how the clergymen could disapprove of such preaching, and why they should shut Mr. Wesley out of their pulpit, for if they did not preach this same Gospel they certainly ought to have done.
However, Mr. Wesley got much larger congregations outside the churches than they ever got inside, and wherever he went hundreds of people believed the wonderful story he told them, and became true followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Strange things happened at his services; some of the people were so overjoyed at what they heard they could not help shouting "Hurrah!" and "Hallelujah!" and they poked each other in the ribs, as much as to say: "Isn't that good?"
Then, when Mr. Wesley told them how Jesus Christ suffered, and how cruelly Judas betrayed Him, and that He allowed all this in order that we might be saved, the people would burst into tears, and you could hear their sobs all over the great congregation. All sorts of people came to the services, thieves and gamblers, poor people and rich people, and all heard the same glad tidings of salvation.
Mr. Wesley did not remain at Bristol; several times he went up to London, and wherever he went crowds came to hear him. One day when he was preaching at Newgate, a prison in London, and was telling the people what would become of them if they did not give up their wicked ways, a woman whom he had known for many years as a very bad character, burst into tears and begged Mr. Wesley to pray for her. Many of the other prisoners did the same, and numbers believed in Jesus Christ as their Saviour, and became Christian men and we men.
It was just wonderful; but it is sad to think that if these people had only heard the Gospel before, they might never have been the wicked men and women they were. As soon as ever they heard, they believed.
All the magazines and newspapers that were published were full of the doings of the Methodists. They were still called all sorts of names and abused dreadfully. But the good people had got so used to this that they did not mind, indeed, they hardly expected any other treatment. In those days very few of the poor people could read, and one newspaper complained that nearly every one who went to hear the Methodists wanted to learn to read the Bible, and as soon as ever he could spell out a chapter he would go and read it to some one who could not read, and then they would talk about it together. This, the paper said, wasted a great deal of time, for the men were so busy talking and reading their Bibles that they could not get on with their work, and the woollen trade in Yorkshire would soon be ruined. Of course this last was not true, and was only said to stop the Methodists from preaching. It showed, however, how sincere and how much in earnest the people were.
But amidst all the persecutions of mobs of ignorant and brutal men and women who knew no better, and of abuse and slander by the rich and the educated, who ought to have known better, nothing pained Mr. Wesley so much as the unkind words of his sister Emilia. She was his favourite sister, and he thought a great deal about her opinion. In an angry letter she wrote him, she said the Methodists were "a lot of bad people."
However, John Wesley and his friends calmly went on doing the work they felt God had called them to do. The peace of God was in their hearts, and the sunlight of His love brightened their faces, and made them tender and forgiving to all their enemies. As Jesus Christ prayed for the cruel men who crucified Him, so they prayed: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
