At Church in Wesley's Chapel.
A few days after our trip up the Thames and our visit to Teddington and Hampton Court, we—there was nearly the same party—went into East London to see what may be called "the Cradle of Methodism." It is City Road Chapel, which both John and Charles Wesley preached in. It has been several times restored, but is now almost exactly as it was when the Wesleys lived. We went on a tram-car, which had a double deck to it, and which went as slowly as do the few remaining horse-cars in our own land. Our route lay out behind the Bank of England, into a poor part of the city, but a part that makes an attempt to brush itself up along the line of broad City Road.
The chapel is still the centre of Wesleyan activity, and we got to it in time to hear a part of the morning service—a service which was, by-the-way, an odd mixture of Church of England forms and Methodist simplicity. After service we met the pastor, a charming man of sixty, who, knowing us at once as Americans, showed us every part of the chapel. I even read a verse from Wesley's Bible while standing in the pulpit in which he preached. The grave of John Wesley is a few feet without the rear chancel window of the chapel, and within thirty or forty feet of the pulpit. It is a common grave in the sense that it is in the ground and not in a building, and a fence surrounds it. Charles Wesley is buried at the right of the path, fifty feet farther back, and Susannah Wesley, the mother of both men, is interred in Bunhill Fields, which is across the street from City Road Chapel; and not very far from her, in the very centre of the "Field," lies John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress.
We enjoyed our Sunday exceedingly—so well that two of us went back on Monday to see more of this old "Cradle of Methodism."
Anna Burton.
New York.