CHAPTER XXXI.
Back in London.—Mr. John and Mr. Charles go visiting.—Too much for one.—Talking matters over.—The first Methodist Conference.—No time to be in a hurry.—What early rising can do.—First tract distributors.—A big district.—Boarding schools 150 years ago.—Dreadful rules.
E have been travelling all over England with Mr. Wesley, now I think we must go back to London with him. The society there was still the largest in the country: in the year I am writing about (1744), they had one thousand nine hundred and fifty members. Mr. Wesley very much wished to visit every one of these members, and asked his brother Charles to go with him. They started their visiting at six o'clock every morning, and did not leave off till six o'clock at night.
Six o'clock a.m. seems a funny time to call and see any one, does it not? But you see people used to get up at four or five in the morning in those days, and used to go to bed at eight, so it was not really such a funny time as it seems.
Though Mr. John and Mr. Charles started so early and worked so late, it took them a long, long time to visit all those 1950 members, and when they had finished, Mr. Wesley realised for the first time how his work had grown. He saw it was impossible, even with his brother's help, to manage all the preachers and all the members scattered over the country, when even the work in London was more than he could undertake alone. He thought about this a great deal, and then he asked four clergymen and four of his helpers, or what we should call local preachers, to meet him and his brother at the Foundry, to talk things over and decide what ought to be done. These gentlemen accepted his invitation, and there, on that eventful Monday in June, 1744, the first Methodist Conference met; and from that time up to the present, no year has passed but Methodist preachers and helpers have gathered together to make plans and talk business.
I am sure you must all have heard of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference, which is now held every July or August in some one or other of the large towns of England. This first conference was opened with solemn prayer and a sermon by Mr. Charles Wesley; then all the difficulties of the work were talked over, and arrangements made for the future. Mr. John Wesley presided, and for forty-six years after, at every conference, their beloved leader and head took the chair at this annual gathering.