“My work in the country cannot be finished before the latter end of August, as the circuit is now larger by some hundred miles than when I was in the north two years ago. Oh let the one thing be ever uppermost in our thoughts!
“To promote either your temporal or eternal good will always be a pleasure to,
“Dear Patty, your affectionate brother,
“John Wesley.”[427]
Let us follow Wesley in his enlarged circuit. His labours were prodigious. He writes: “Three days in a week I can preach thrice a day without hurting myself; but I had now far exceeded this, besides meeting classes and exhorting the societies.”
On the 15th of June, he rode to Durham, and preached in a field, by the river side, “the congregation,” says Christopher Hopper, his companion, “behaving tolerably well, except that one poor man was hit by a stone, and lost a little blood.” In the evening, Wesley preached at Hartlepool, Hopper remaining behind to preach in the field at Durham, where a gentleman, so called, hired a base fellow to strip himself naked, and swim the river so as to disturb the hearers.[428] Shortly after this, Durham had its Methodist society, one of the first members of which was Mrs. Elizabeth Ward, whose house was the home of Wesley and his preachers,—a neat but nervous Christian lady, who, at the age of eighty-three, died in 1826, calling upon her friends to “magnify the Lord!”[429].
From Hartlepool, Wesley proceeded to Stockton, where Methodism had been fostered, if not introduced, by John Unthank, a farmer and local preacher, at Billingham, who, besides meeting a class at Stockton, and another at Billingham, met a third at Darlington, at a distance of fifteen miles. He died in 1822, aged ninety-three.[430] One of Unthank’s first converts was John MacGowan, the son of a prosperous baker at Edinburgh, and intended for a minister of the Church of Scotland, but who, at nineteen years of age, joined the rebel army of the Pretender, and fought at the battle of Culloden. He then fled to Durham, and apprenticed himself to a linen weaver, and was now tossing the shuttle in the vicinity of Stockton. MacGowan became a local preacher; but, being Calvinistic in his sentiments, he left the Methodists, and, in 1766, became the minister of Devonshire Square chapel, London, where he continued until his death in 1780. His “Dialogues of Devils,” his “Shaver,” and other works, making two octavo volumes, were once in great repute. He was a man of good natural abilities, and of lively imagination, a hard student, and a laborious preacher. His death was triumphant, some of his last words being, “Methinks I have as much of heaven as I can hold.”[431] Before leaving Stockton, it may be added, that, in 1769, a small chapel, twelve yards by nine, with a gallery at the end, was built; and that, afterwards, Stockton society sent out Christopher Smith, who removed to Cincinnati, in the United States, about the year 1800, where his joiner’s shop was then the only Methodist place of preaching, and he himself made the twenty-second member of the Methodist society, in “the queen city of the west,” now so beautifully built on the banks of the Ohio.[432]
After preaching at Stockton, Wesley went to Darlington, and preached his first sermon there. Here Methodism had been introduced by Unthank and MacGowan, and its meeting-house was a thatched cottage with a mudden floor. One of its first converts was John Hosmer, who afterwards became an itinerant preacher, was a son of thunder, and a man mighty in prayer and in the Scriptures, but whose failing health obliged him to relinquish the itinerancy, when he settled as a surgeon at Sunderland, and, after enduring great affliction, died in peace, at York, about the year 1780.[433]
Leaving Darlington, Wesley went to Yarm, where Mr. George Merryweather had fitted up his hayloft for a preaching room, in which, for three years past, the people had been favoured with a sermon or sermons, from the itinerant preachers, on at least every alternate Sunday. In 1763, the hayloft cathedral was superseded by a chapel, and Yarm was the head of a Methodist circuit, embracing Stockton, Hartlepool, Guisborough, Stokesley, Whitby, Thirsk, Ripon, Northallerton, and thirty other places.[434] For many years, Mr. Merryweather was one of Wesley’s most faithful friends; and, of course, his house, at Yarm, was Wesley’s home. Here he always met with the most loving welcome, and sometimes with softer kindness than he wished. An old Methodist, at Yarm, a few years ago, related that she well remembered Wesley,—his cassock, his black silk stockings, his large silver buckles, and his old lumbering carriage, with a bookcase inside of it. In fact, she herself and another little girl, while playing, ran the pole of the carriage through Mr. Merryweather’s parlour window, for which they deservedly received a scolding. She further stated that, on one occasion, when Mr. Merryweather’s servant entered Wesley’s room, she found Wesley’s coachman rolling himself up and down the feather bed most vigorously, because, as he affirmed, Wesley would not sleep in it until it was made as hard as possible.
Wesley held the quarterly meeting of the stewards of the Yarm circuit at Hutton Rudby, a small country village, with a new chapel, and a society of about eighty members, of whom nearly seventy were believers, and sixteen sanctified. He also preached at Potto, where Mrs. Moon resided, one of his valued correspondents and friends, whose conversion had been brought about by an old woman, a Methodist from Birstal, who came to the house of Mr. Moon to card his sheep “doddings,” and to spin them into linsey woolsey yarn.[435] In this way, Methodism was originated at Potto, Hutton Rudby, Stokesley, and the neighbourhood round about.