Let it be granted that this is true, and then there is no difficulty in perceiving that it was important, in the highest degree, that a man like John Wesley should have convictions and feelings in reference to the unseen world far stronger and deeper than those which men, and even ministers, ordinarily have; and that there is no need to wonder at the strange, the mysterious, the supernatural events that happened in his father’s house; inasmuch as the direct tendency of these events was to create, or strengthen and intensify, the convictions and feelings already mentioned.
That such an effect was produced we have undoubted evidence. Emilia Wesley, writing to her brother Samuel at the time, says: “I am so far from being superstitious, that I was too much inclined to infidelity; and I therefore heartily rejoice at having such an opportunity of convincing myself, past doubt or scruple, of the existence of some beings besides those we see.”[[231]] This is remarkable language for a young, educated lady, twenty-four years of age, to use in reference to ghosts. So far from shuddering at the thought of having heard and seen a ghost, she heartily rejoices, because the unusual and strange occurrence had strengthened her Scriptural belief, and convinced her, beyond a doubt, of an unseen, vast, and eternal world.
John Wesley was at the Charter-House School, London, and therefore was not an eye and an ear witness of the disturbances in his father’s parsonage; but, of course, he heard of them, and that they produced the same effect in him which they produced in his sister Emilia, is a fact which no one can reasonably call in question. If there be one feature more striking than another in John Wesley’s religious character, it is his deep-rooted, intense, animated, powerful, impelling conviction of the dread realities of an unseen world. Without this, Wesley never would and never could have braved so much opprobrium, endured so much suffering, and undergone so much toil for the sole and single purpose of saving souls. This great conviction took possession of the man, he loved it, he cherished it, he tried to impress it upon all his helpers and upon all his people; and the result of the whole was the calling into action an agency, which, for earnestness of feeling, oneness of aim, enthusiastic faith, pleading prayer, unwearied labour, martyr courage, and spiritual success, will bear comparison with any agency, which, in any age, it has pleased the great Head of the Christian Church to call and use, in saving sinners from the agonies of bottomless perdition.
“With my latest breath,” says John Wesley, “will I bear testimony against giving up to infidels one great proof of the invisible world, I mean that of witchcraft and apparitions, confirmed by the testimony of all ages.[[232]] The English in general, and indeed most of the men of learning in Europe, have given up all account of witches and apparitions as mere old wives’ fables. I am sorry for it; and I willingly take this opportunity of entering my solemn protest against this violent compliment, which so many that believe the Bible pay to those who do not believe it. I owe them no such service. I take knowledge, these are at the bottom of the outcry which has been raised, and with such insolence spread throughout the nation, in direct opposition not only to the Bible, but to the suffrage of the wisest and best of men in all ages and nations. They well know (whether Christians know it or not) that the giving up of witchcraft is, in effect, giving up the Bible; and they know on the other hand, that, if but one account of the intercourse of men with separate spirits be admitted, their whole castle in the air—Deism, Atheism, Materialism—falls to the ground. I know no reason, therefore, why we should suffer even this weapon to be wrested out of our hands. It is true that there are numerous arguments besides this which abundantly confute their vain imaginations, but we need not be hooted out of one; neither reason nor religion requires this. One of the capital objections which I have known urged over and over is, ‘Did you ever see an apparition yourself?’ No, nor did I ever see a murder; yet I believe there is such a thing. The testimony of unexceptionable witnesses fully convinces me both of the one and the other.”[[233]]
This was the opinion, not of a young enthusiast, but of a scholar, a Christian, a minister, and an author, now in the sixty-sixth year of his age. John Wesley has been censured for his credulity; but did he merit this? I doubt it. Southey says that “he invalidated his own authority by listening to the most absurd tales with implicit credulity, and recording them as authenticated facts.”[[234]]
In reply, I venture to assert that Wesley never contended for anything but what Southey himself admits in the passage from his writings, already quoted—viz., that “the spirits of the departed are sometimes permitted to manifest themselves,” and that the reason why such apparitions are permitted or ordered, is to convince “those unhappy persons, who looking through the dim glass of infidelity, see nothing beyond this life, that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy?” This admits all that John Wesley argued for. Besides, it must be borne in mind, that though John Wesley inserts not a few “strange accounts” of apparitions, &c., in his journals and in his magazine, it is not true that he says he believed them all. He simply relates some as they had been related to himself, and leaves the reader to form his own opinion. In reference to others, he boldly expresses a firm belief in their truthfulness, because he had received them on testimony the most credible; and this, be it observed, is exactly what Mr Southey does in reference to the “strange accounts” of the disturbances in the Epworth Parsonage; so that if Wesley, the Reformer, deserves censure for credulity, Southey, the poet-laureate, deserves just the same.
The reader will excuse what, perhaps, is deemed a lengthened digression; but it was impossible, in a life of Samuel Wesley, sen., to pass over the strange noises in his house, and having related them, it would have been cowardly in the biographer to have shrunk from expressing an opinion concerning them. My carefully-formed opinion is, that the noises were really supernatural, and that the end to be answered was specially to qualify certain members of the Wesley family for the special work for which God had fore-ordained them.
This opinion may seem wild and extravagant, but it has not been formed from prejudice or without research. The examination was commenced with a persuasion that it would be possible to explain all the accounts of the Epworth noises on Priestley’s supposition that the whole affair was a clever trick, performed by Wesley’s servants, or Wesley’s enemies, or by both united; and, indeed, there was a secret wish in the writer’s heart that it might be so. With Southey, however, and others, he found this to be impossible, and hence there was nothing for it but to believe that the noises were supernatural, and to suggest a reason for their occurrence. This has been done as fairly and as honestly as the writer has had ability to do it; and now, expecting to be ridiculed, he entreats the reader not to skim the matter hastily, but to sift it for himself, remembering John Wesley’s words:—“If but one account of the intercourse of men with spirits be admitted, the whole castle in the air—Deism, Atheism, and Materialism—falls to the ground” at once.
There can be no doubt that ninety-nine ghost stories out of a hundred are fanatical fabrications, but to say that such things as witchcraft and apparitions do not exist is, to use the words of Dr Anthony Horneck, to play more hocus-pocus tricks with the Holy Scriptures than, as it is alleged, the witch of Endor did in raising the prophet Samuel. In former times men had a propensity to believe too much, at present the propensity is to believe too little. To philosophic unbelievers, witchcraft and apparitions may seem impossible and absurd, but the Bible establishes the fact that such things have existed; and never gives the least intimation that they are not again to be permitted.