We have said the Revival became conservative. It is true the Countess of Huntingdon did much to make it so; but it assumed a shape of vitality, and a force of coherent strength, chiefly from the touch of Wesley’s administrative mind. The present City Road Chapel, which was opened in 1776, opposite Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, is probably the first illustration of this fact; it stands where stood the Foundry—time-honoured spot in the history of Methodism. It stood in Moorfields; the City Road was a mere lane then. The building had been used by government for casting cannon; it was a rude ruin. Wesley purchased it and the site at the very commencement of his work, in 1739; he turned it into a temple. As the years passed on it became the cradle of London Methodism, accommodating fifteen hundred people. Until within twenty years of Wesley’s purchase this had been a kind of Woolwich Arsenal to the government; it became a temple of peace, and here came “band-rooms,” school-rooms, book-rooms—the first saplings of Methodist usefulness.
JOHN WESLEY.
It has been truly said by a writer in the British Quarterly, that the most romantic lives of the saints of the Roman Catholic calendar do not present a more startling succession of incidents than those which meet us in the life and labours of Wesley. Romish stories claim that Blessed Raymond, of Pegnafort, spread his cloak upon the sea to transport him across the water, sailing one hundred and sixty miles in six hours, and entering his convent through closed doors! The devout and zealous Francis Xavier spent three whole days in two different places at the same time, preaching all the while! Rome shines out in transactions like these: Wesley does not; but he seems to have been almost ubiquitous, and he moves with a rapidity reminding us of that flying angel who had the everlasting Gospel to preach, and he shines alike in his conflicts with nature and the still wilder tempests caused by the passions of men. We read of his travelling, through the long wintry hours, two hundred and eighty miles on horseback, in six days; it was a wonderful feat in those times. When Wesley first began his itinerancy there were no turnpikes in the country; but before he closed his career, he had probably paid more, says Dr. Southey, for turnpikes, than any other man in England, for no other man in England travelled so much. His were no pleasant journeys, as of summer days; he travelled through the fens of Lincolnshire when the waters were out; and over the fells of Northumberland when they were covered with snow. Speaking of one tremendous journey, through dreadful weather, he says, “Many a rough journey have I had before; but one like this I never had, between wind and hail, and rain, and ice, and snow, and driving sleet, and piercing cold; but it is past. Those days will return no more, and are therefore as though they had never been.
“‘And pain, like pleasure, is a dream!’”
How singular was his visit to Epworth, where he found the church of his childhood, his father’s church, the church of his own first ministrations, closed against him! The minister of the church was a drunkard; he had been under great obligations, both to Wesley himself and to the Wesley family, but he assailed him with the most offensive brutality; and when Wesley, denied the pulpit, signified his intention of simply partaking of the Lord’s Supper with the parishioners on the following Sunday, the coarse man sent word, “Tell Mr. Wesley I shall not give him the Sacrament, for he is not fit.” It seems to have cut Mr. Wesley very deeply. “It was fit,” he says, “that he who repelled me from the table where I had myself so often distributed the bread of life, should be one who owed his all in this world to the tender love my father had shown to his, as well as personally to himself.” He stayed there, however, eight days, and preached every evening in the churchyard, standing on his father’s tomb; truly a singular sight, the living son, the prophet of his age, surely little short of inspired, preaching from his dead father’s grave with such pathos and power as we may well conceive. “I am well assured,” he says, “I did far more good to my old Lincolnshire parishioners by preaching three days on my father’s tomb than I did by preaching three years in his pulpit!”
WESLEY PREACHING IN EPWORTH CHURCHYARD.
As he travelled to and fro, odd mistakes sometimes happened. Arrived at York, he went into the church in St. Saviour’s Gate; the rector, one Mr. Cordeau, had often warned his congregation against going to hear “that vagabond Wesley” preach. It was usual in that day for ministers of the Establishment to wear the cassock or gown, just as everywhere in France we see the French abbés. Wesley had on his gown, like a university man in a university town. Mr. Cordeau, not knowing who he was, offered him his pulpit; Wesley was quite willing, and always ready. Sermons leaped impromptu from his lips, and this sermon was an impressive one; at its close the clerk asked the rector if he knew who the preacher was. “No.” “Why, sir, it was that vagabond Wesley!” “Ah, indeed!” said the astonished clergyman; “well, never mind, we have had a good sermon.” The anecdotes of the incidents which waited upon the preacher in his travels are of every order of humorous, affecting, and romantic interest; they are spread over a large variety of volumes, and even still need to be gathered, framed, and hung in the light of some effective chronicle.
