John Wesley's fine common sense had repudiated this doctrine, whereupon there had been confusion and falling away among the Fetter Lane society; and the great leader had withdrawn to a chapel and dwelling-house of his own creation, in a disused foundry for cannon, near Finsbury Square. It was here that George Stobart had found faith, and it was in Wesley's strong and active crusade against sin and suffering that he found satisfaction.
After somewhat reluctantly entering upon his career as an itinerant preacher, when the magnitude of the work, the multitudes eager to hear the Word of God, revealed themselves to him, John Wesley, again reluctantly, enlisted the help of lay preachers. The Church had shut her doors upon him—that Anglican Church of which he had ever been a true and staunch apostle—and he had to do without the Church. He saw before him the people of England awakened from the torpor of a century of automatic religion, and saw that he needed more labourers in this vast vineyard than the Church could give him.
For the last two years George Stobart had been one of Wesley's favourite helpers, and had accompanied his chief in several of those itinerant journeys which made half England Wesleyan. He preached at Bristol, rode with Wesley, preaching at every stage of the journey, from Bristol to Falmouth, where he stood shoulder to shoulder with him in one of the worst riots the Christian hero ever faced. He was with him through the roughest encounters in Lancashire, stood beside him on the Market Cross at Bolton, when the great wild mob surged round them and stones flew thick and fast, and where, as if by a miracle, while many of the rabble were hurt, the preacher remained untouched.
In all this, in the effect of his own preaching, in the hazards and adventures of those long rides across the face of a country where most things were new, Stobart found unalloyed delight. He loved his mission in the streets and alleys of Lambeth, his visits to the London jails, for here he had to wrestle with the devils of ignorance and blasphemy, to preach cleanliness to men and women who had been born and reared in filth, to meet the wants of a multitude with a handful of silver, to give counsel, sympathy, compassion, where he could not give bread. This was work that pleased him. Here he felt himself the soldier and servant of Christ.
It was in the religion of the chamber that Stobart fell short of the mark. He loved the Word of God when God spoke by the lips of His Son; but he had not that reverent affection for the Old Testament which Wesley had urged upon him as essential to true religion. For the grandeur, the poetry of Holy Writ he had the highest appreciation; but there were many pages of the sacred volume in which he looked in vain for the light of inspiration. If he could have read his Bible in the same inquiring spirit that Samuel Coleridge brought to it, he might have been better satisfied with the book and with himself; but Wesley had forbidden any such liberal interpretation of the Scriptures. Every line, every word, every letter was to be accepted as the law of God.
He was dissatisfied with himself for his coldness, for wandering thoughts, for the dying out of that sacred fire which John Wesley's preaching had kindled in his soul at the time of his conversion. But he told himself that such a fire can burn but once in a lifetime. 'Tis like the burning bush in which Moses beheld his God. That stupendous vision comes once, and once only. It has done its purifying work, and burnt out sin. But between the starting-point of the converted penitent and the Christian's crown, how long and difficult the race! George Stobart had felt his footsteps flagging on the stony road. He had not lost courage. The dogged determination to win that eternal crown was still with him; but he had lost something of his first enthusiasm, that romantic temper in which it had pleased him to prove his sincerity by the sacrifice of fortune and station, and by a marriage which would have seemed impossible to him in his unregenerate days.
A week after Lady Kilrush had given her great entertainment there came a letter from her, addressed to Mrs. Stobart, and the very seal upon it was as precious in the sight of the printer's daughter as if it had been a jewel.
"Look, George, what a beautiful seal—a naked boy with a helmet, and two snakes twisted round his cane. Who can have written to me? Why, the name is signed outside, 'Townshend.' Sure I know nobody of that name."
"'Tis but the frank, child. The letter is from Lady Kilrush."