Soon after this experience at Aldersgate Chapel Mr. Wesley made a journey to Herrnhut, Germany, to visit the Moravian brethren, but soon withdrew from them because of their errors in doctrine. He antagonized the dogma of Zinzendorf, that men are entirely sanctified at the moment when they are converted. His opinion of the count differed materially from his estimation of Böhler.
CHAPTER VIII.
WESLEY'S MULTIPLIED LABORS.
No sooner had Mr. Wesley experienced the transforming power of grace than he hastened to declare it to all, taking "the world" for his "parish."
After confessing to those immediately about him what God had done for his soul he flew with all possible speed to declare it to the miners in their darkness, to the Newgate felons in their loathsome cells, to the wealthy and refined worshipers at St. John's and St. Ives', offering in burning words a common salvation alike to the Newgate felon and to the St. John's and St. Ives' aristocracy.
Mr. Wesley was a most pertinacious adherent of the English Establishment, and never dreamed of attempting the salvation of souls by preaching the Gospel outside of her church walls until he was ruthlessly expelled from all her pulpits. But he had firmly resolved that neither bishops, nor curates, nor church wardens should stand between him and duty. But what to do and where to go he did not know. Every door seemed closed against him, and almost every face save the face of God frowned upon him. But while God smiled he knew no fear. In his extremity he took counsel of Whitefield, resulting in a firm purpose to do the work to which Providence seemed to have clearly called them. Churches were closed, to be sure, but the unsaved and perishing were everywhere except in the churches, and to reach and to save them they betook themselves to the wide, wide world. They were now seen in hospitals, administering spiritual comfort to the sick; in prisons, offering eternal life to condemned felons; at Kingswood, calling the dark colliers to a knowledge of the truth. In these places unfrequented by sacerdotal robes the Gospel of the grace of God was carried by these unhonored servants of Jesus. But soon prisons and hospitals were denied them, and then they fled to the fields and to the streets of the cities, choosing for their pulpits the market-house steps, a horse-block, a coal heap, a table, a stone wall, a mountain side, a horse's back, etc.
The colliers of Kingswood had no church, no Sabbath, no Gospel. They were the most corrupt, degraded, blasphemous class to be found in England. Southey describes them as "lawless, brutal, and worse than heathen." They seemed to have been forsaken of God and man. This was a fit place to test the power of "the Gospel of the grace of God." The intrepid Whitefield was the first to break the ice. "Pulpits are denied," he says, "and the poor colliers are ready to perish." So he unfurled the Gospel banner "with a mountain for his pulpit," he says, "and the broad heavens for a sounding-board."
The Wesleys are lifting up their voices like trumpets in all parts of the kingdom. They are threading their way along the mountains of Wales, where the people know as little of Christianity as do the wild Indians of our Western plains. They are seen in Ireland, in all her towns and cities, calling her papal-cursed sons to a knowledge of Jesus. Again their voices are heard amid the hills and vales of Scotland, urging her stern clans to accept Jesus by faith alone. Then they are surrounded by tens of thousands of besmeared miners who are weeping for sin and rejoicing in deliverance from it.