CHAPTER VII.
WESLEY'S RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE.
Mr. Wesley's religious experience deserves special notice. If he was raised up by God for any purpose, it was to revive spiritual Christianity, which included justification by faith, entire sanctification, and the witness of the Holy Spirit. To understand his own experience on these doctrines is the object of this chapter.
Let us first notice the external religious life which Mr. Wesley maintained prior to the wonderful change which occurred soon after his return from America. From his journals we learn that he said prayers both public and private, and read the Scriptures and other good books constantly. He experienced sensible comfort in reading à Kempis, resulting in an entire change in his conversation and life. He set apart two hours each day for religious retirement, and received the sacrament every week. He watched against every sin, whether in word or deed. He shook off all his trifling acquaintances, and was careful that every moment of his time should be improved. He not only watched over his own heart, but urged others to become religious. He visited those in prison, assisted the poor and sick, and did what he could with his presence and means for the souls and bodies of men. He deprived himself of all the superfluities and many of the necessaries of life that he might help others. He fasted twice each week, omitted no part of self-denial which he thought lawful, and carefully used in public and private at every opportunity all the means of grace. For the doing of these things he became a byword, but rejoiced that his name was cast out as evil. His sole aim was to do God's will and secure inward holiness. Sometimes he had joy, sometimes sorrow; sometimes the terror of the law alarmed him, and sometimes the comforts of the Gospel cheered him. He had many remarkable answers to prayer, and many sensible soul comforts.
Let us next notice Mr. Wesley's estimate of his own religious state at this time.
He found that he had not such faith in Christ as kept his heart from being troubled in time of danger, for in a storm he cried unto God every moment, but in a calm he did not. His words he discovered to be such as did not edify, especially his manner of speaking of his enemies. By these he was convinced of unbelief and pride. He gives a dark picture of his state at this time, much darker than the light of after years justified. "I went to America," he says, "to convert the Indians, but O, who shall convert me? O, who will deliver me from this fear of death?"
On landing in England he writes: "It is now two years and almost four months since I left my native country in order to teach the Georgia Indians the nature of Christianity, but what have I learned myself in the meantime? Why, what I least of all expected—that I, who went to America to convert others, was never myself converted to God."
He further says: "This, then, have I learned in the ends of the earth—that I am fallen short of the glory of God, alienated from the life of God; I am a child of wrath, an heir of hell."
In later years, when carefully reconsidering his early experience, Mr. Wesley was not disposed to form the same severe judgment of his religious state. He wisely added several qualifying remarks which should not be omitted when his early language is employed. He could not say that he was not converted at this time, or that he was a child of wrath. To the expression, "I was never myself converted to God," is added this note: "I am not sure of that," strongly intimating that he believed he was then converted.