When the preacher finished, the people stood as if spell-bound, then they all crowded and pressed round him, full of love and kindness towards the man who had brought them such good news. They nearly trampled him down in their eagerness to speak to him, and he had to slip round a back way in order to escape. When he got to the inn where he was staying, he found some of the people had got there before him; they had come to beg and pray him to stay among them. No, he could not.
"Stay a few days," said one. No, he could not do that.
"Just one day more," they begged.
Poor Mr. Wesley was very loth to leave these eager hearers, but he had promised to be in Bristol on the Tuesday, and this was Sunday night, and it would take him all the time to get to his appointment, and he was a man that could not break his word. So he was sadly obliged to refuse.
Before very long, however, Mr. Charles Wesley went to Newcastle, and after a time, Mr. Wesley himself paid a second visit.
It was a plan of the Methodists always to go to the poorest and most uncared-for people. These they generally found among the colliers. Wherever there were coal mines, the district round them was sure to be the abode of dirt, ignorance, and sin. You remember what a dreadful place Kingswood was when the Methodists first went? Because they found Newcastle just as bad, they called it "The Kingswood of the North."
