and the moral awakening of the common
people
now that long time has passed, the two bright names of the eighteenth century are seen to be the names of washington and wesley. the statement will come with a note of shock to many readers, but beyond most critical estimates, it is one that will stand examination. time has a way of reversing judgments, and not the least of the changes in men's thought has been the gradual transformation in the attitude of the historian toward wesley, carried to his grave by six poor men in 1791. now that one hundred and twenty years have passed, wesley has thirty millions of followers, who believe in his method and are carrying forward his work. the time has come when there is not a city in great britain, or on the north american continent, or in india—and few indeed, of any size in china or japan—where there are not[pg 144] some disciples of this teacher, spreading his message, according to his plan. during these hundred and twenty years, dynasties have fallen, empires have perished, cities and states have changed, but the ideas and the influence of wesley, stamped upon the memories of his followers, have spread like leaven, working often in silence and secrecy, but slowly transforming the world.
the praise of his critics is enough to lend john wesley enduring fame. leslie stephen called him "the greatest captain of men of his century." macaulay ridiculed the historians of his day who failed to see that "the greatest event of the era was the work of wesley." to macaulay's statement that wesley had a genius for government, equal to that of richelieu, matthew arnold added, "he had a genius for godliness." buckle called him the first of ecclesiastical statesmen, while lecky said, "wesley's sermons were of greater historic importance to england than all the victories by land and sea under pitt."
"no other man," writes augustine birrell, "did such a life-work for england. he helped to save england from the horrors of the french revolution." this is not a careless pronouncement, nor an instance of biographical exaggeration. born in 1703, belonging[pg 145] to the era just preceding the french revolution, john wesley, with his fifty years among the working people of great britain, changed the thinking of his time. the eighteenth century was a coarse age; carlyle summarized it in a single biting phrase: "soul extinct; stomach well alive." the pictures of hogarth, the journals of wesley, and the history of great criminals prove that there was at least a basis for carlyle's bitterness. dr. johnson, in his dictionary, defines a pension as "pay given to a street hireling for treason to his country." burke describes the british secretary of state as "the greatest drunkard and most unlucky gambler of his age." walpole portrays cabinet ministers and statesmen reeling into the ferry-boat of charon at forty-five, worn out with drunkenness and gout. in his pictures of beer street and gin lane, hogarth sketches the drunkenness and filth of the london that he calls "the city of gallows," with a street that was a lane of gibbets, where the corpses of felons hung. hume and walpole both prophesied an inevitable revolution, with corpses that would be piled up as barricades "in front of human beasts who fought with the ferocity of tigers." but at the very moment when france was seething with revolt, across in[pg 146] england, in newcastle and moorfields, thousands of grimy miners were assembled, now weeping in penitence, now singing hymns of praise to god. when the spirit of destruction swept over europe, wesley's revival had done its work, and its influence held the people of england back from the horrors of the guillotine in paris. it is for this reason that historians rank john wesley in terms of abiding influence, above pitt, wellington and nelson.
in adam bede, george eliot, the great novelist, describes with the minuteness of an eye-witness an open-air revival meeting among the early methodists of england. her heroine, dinah morris, relates the incident in the following words: "it was on just such a sort of evening as this, when i was a little girl, and my aunt took me to hear a good man preach out-of-doors, just as we are here. i remember his face well; he was a very old man, and had very long, white hair, his voice was very soft and beautiful, not like any voice i had ever heard before. i was a little girl, and scarcely knew anything, and this old man seemed to me such a different sort of man from anybody i had ever seen before, that i thought that he had perhaps come down from the skies to preach to us, and i said, 'aunt,[pg 147] will he go back into the sky to-night, like the picture in the bible?'" . . . that man of god was john wesley, who had spent a lifetime going up and down the land, doing good. he had preached from fifteen to twenty times a week for fifty years—in all, over forty thousand times. in this, his sixty-second year, he was to preach eight hundred times. he had ridden nearly two hundred and fifty thousand miles; and in his long preaching tours through ireland he had crossed the channel forty times. the poor had lost their heart to him. the ignorant, the outcast, the collier and clerk alike, all pressed and thronged about this saintly figure, with his beautiful face, his clear eyes, his musical voice, who never tired of telling people, "god is love; christ is love; and religion is life, as it is the happiest, so it is the cheerfullest thing in the world."
it is written of moses that his hands were held up by two friends, aaron and hur. not otherwise john wesley was supported on either side by two great comrades,—whitefield, the evangelist, and his own brother, charles wesley. if any man ever had the gift of eloquence and oratory, it was george whitefield. at twenty-one years of age whitefield received orders, and within a single[pg 148] year he was england's first preacher in point of hearers. his warmest friends may have overpraised this evangelist, but his harshest critics concede that he had the most musical, carrying voice that ever issued from a speaker's throat. during his career he wrote some sixty sermons, but he preached them over and over again, eighteen thousand times. within a single week he spoke on an average of forty hours. there is nothing in his sermons, as they have come down to us, to explain their marvellous transforming influence, but whitefield had the vision of the seer, saw heaven and hell as clearly as he saw the world around him, and could make men see and feel what he himself experienced. benjamin franklin heard whitefield preach in philadelphia, and was carried away by the personality of the preacher, whose luminous eyes, matchless voice, and transfigured face stirred the men of the quaker city as if he were the angel gabriel.
charles wesley, like george whitefield, was an evangelist who preached constantly in the open air, to multitudes of fifteen to twenty thousand people. he was without the iron strength of whitefield, but for fifteen years he did preach once a day, and sometimes two and three times. he lacked whitefield's organ[pg 149] voice, and the strange mystic, magical charm of his brother john, but his sentences were short, with the swiftness of bullets, and he was a most persuasive orator. the fact was, charles wesley's emotions were often beyond his powers of control. he pled with men with tears running down his cheeks; his voice shook and quavered; he melted men until their hearts were like water. often, in the midst of his sermon, he broke into song. in theory he was a high-churchman, but in practice he was a nonconformist, who ordained laymen to the ministry. he was a little man, short-sighted, quick to resent a wrong, loyal in friendship, most lovable, full of faults, and full of sorrow by reason of his faults, an inspired singer of hymns; but he lacked the order, the organizing gift, the iron purpose and the unyielding will of his brother john.
far greater than either whitefield or charles wesley was the brother, preacher, statesman, theologian, scholar, and evangelist. john wesley outlived whitefield by thirty, and his brother charles, by four years. if whitefield preached eighteen thousand times, this amazing man preached forty-two thousand, four hundred times and within fifty-one years. his comrades broke down, his friends passed away, bitter opposition developed,[pg 150] the doors of the churches were closed against him but wesley's zeal "burned long, burned undimmed, burned when even the fire of life turned to ashes." for fifty years he not only preached, but published seven volumes a year. he did an enormous work as author and publisher. in the interests of the poor he was the first man to publish cheap literature, and he brought many wise books within the reach of colliers and peasants. he wrote a volume on household medicine; simple books on grammar, style, good health and history. he translated the writings of other authors, and abridged works that were beyond the poor man's purse. the germ of the modern lecture system, social settlement work, night-schools, and the shelter-houses of general booth, are all in wesley's work. he accomplished an incredible amount as author, publisher, educator, and organizer of social and political reforms. his journal, covering a period of fifty-four years, and existing to-day in the shape of twenty-one beautifully written volumes, has been called "the most amazing record of human exertion ever penned."
this personal journal of john wesley deserves a place among the few great journals of the world. there are only two other[pg 151] eighteen century volumes worthy to be spoken of in the same breath:—walpole's letters and boswell's johnson. horace walpole was the rich idler, the male butterfly, who lived for pleasure and position, and in his gossiping letters embalmed for later generations "all the lords and ladies, the rakes and flirts, the fools and spendthrifts, the gossip and scandal of a rich man's career." dr. johnson stands for manliness, independence, courage, robust common sense. his chief interests in life were literature and politics, and boswell says that he divided society into two classes, whigs who were to be cudgelled and scourged, and tories who were to be admired and praised. but wesley's journal is upon a far higher level. his spirit is not that of curiosity, as was walpole's, nor of vehement resentment and personal preferences, as was johnson's. it is that of a passionate and divine pity. he possessed an overpowering sense of the value of men apart from their position, their politics, their knowledge or ignorance, their poverty or wealth; he saw them as god sees them. and the result is a work far sweeter and finer than either of the two famous volumes just considered.
wonderful the picture of serenity and strength given us in these intimate, vivid[pg 152] pages. the story of a single day is the story of the whole fifty years. wesley rose at four o'clock, read his devotional books until five, preached in the open air to the colliers who had to go to their tasks at half-past six. after breakfast at seven, he mounted his horse; drew rein for a few minutes from time to time to read a page in some book that he was analyzing; after twenty or thirty miles' ride, preached in a public square or some churchyard at noon; dismissed his hearers at one o'clock that they might return to their work; rode rapidly, often twenty miles, to his next appointment, where he preached at five; after supper, when the evening twilight fell, preached again, holding a service that often lasted until nine or even ten o'clock.
during the half century, wesley worked along the lines of a triangle, westward from london to bristol, north by liverpool and carlisle to newcastle; then back to london through the towns of the east coast of england. his preaching tours followed the lines of england's industrial centers. he worked where the population was thickest. he loved the mining districts, where two or three thousand men would assemble for him at almost any hour of the day. the falling[pg 153] rain never disturbed him, the rough roads seemed to bring no tire. he loved crowds, and noise and excitement did not seem to wear upon his strength. apparently there was not a tired or sore nerve in his wonderful little body. an entry in his journal speaks of having travelled that day ninety miles, and not being in the least tired, although he seems to have preached three times. "many a rough journey have i had before," says the journal, "but one like this i never had, between wind and rain, ice and snow, and driving sleet and piercing cold. but it is past; those days will return no more, and are therefore as though they had never been." his appointments were often made a fortnight in advance. his journals are filled with pictures of deep snow, dripping skies, bitter northwest winds.
what is the secret of wesley's greatness, and how did he ever endure such labour? the hidings of his power are in his wonderful ancestry. long after samuel wesley's death, the son found in the garret of the old rectory a manuscript of his father's, with a scheme of world-wide evangelization which became a chart for the son, who said, "the world is my parish." the mother, susannah, was possessed of so many gifts that her son felt that to have[pg 154] fallen heir to her mental and moral treasures was, in itself, a gift of god. gibbon described his tutor in oxford as a "man who remembered that he had a salary to receive and forgot that he had a duty to perform."
john wesley had the opposite theory of life. at seventeen, going to oxford he won distinction as a scholar of the finest classical taste, of the most liberal and manly sentiments, and one of the finest men of his time. elected a fellow of lincoln college when thirty-two years of age, appointed lecturer in greek, carrying on his own studies in arabic and hebrew, in poetry and oratory, young wesley wrote in his journal a sentence that describes the next sixty years of his life: "leisure and i have taken leave of each other." it was true of him in middle life, and it was to be true of him to the day of his death.
during the critical years when wesley was educating himself, his favourite books were the imitation of christ, by thomas à kempis, jeremy taylor's purity of intention, and william law's masterpiece, serious call. it was while he was in oxford that he formed the habit of reading for one hour before he outlined the duties of the day. then came the two years' visit to the united states, his[pg 155] brief ministry in georgia, his friendship with the moravians, and that golden hour on may 24, 1738, when he went with peter b?ehler and passed through an experience like that of paul on the road to damascus, that has been described by the critical historian lecky,—"it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the scene which took place at that humble meeting in aldersgate street forms an epoch in english history." but it is a striking fact that wesley's real work did not begin until he had reached full middle life. it was under the influence of george whitefield, the greatest pulpit orator england has produced, that wesley went to bristol and under pressure by whitefield, consented to speak in the open air to some three thousand people, gathered about a little eminence. few careers offer greater encouragement and inspiration to the man who at middle-age has yet to find himself.
and what was the secret of his incredible strength? the secret is very simple. during each day he kept two or three little islands of silence and solitude for himself, betwixt the sermons and crowds. he learned how to read books on horseback. he never hurried, and never worried. he preached with physical restraint, so that public speech became a[pg 156] form of physical exercise, a life-giving kind of gymnastics. he learned how to breathe, so that speaking three, or four and five hours a day did not injure his vocal cords. morley, in his life of gladstone, says that at gravesend, gladstone spoke for two hours to an audience of twenty thousand, and his biographer declares that physically and intellectually, that speech was the greatest of mr. gladstone's career. gladstone was sixty-two years old when he performed that feat, which is unique in his career. wesley's journal is filled with records like this:—
sunday, august 10, 1786. preached in the churchyard to large congregations.
preached at one p. m. to twenty thousand.
at five o'clock to another such congregation.
all at the utmost stretch of my voice.
but my strength was as my day.
seven years later, august 23, 1773, his journal holds this record:
preached at gwennap pit to above 32,000, perhaps the first time that a man of seventy had been heard by 30,000 persons.
fitchett says that wesley's voice must have far outranged gladstone's. the people all stood closely packed together. at bristol,[pg 157] after the audience had gone, one man measured the ground from wesley's stand to the outskirts of the audience and found it to be 420 feet. for this reason his biographers say that wesley preached more sermons, rode more miles, worked more hours, printed more books, and influenced more lives than any englishman of his age, or any age. in 1773 he writes, "i am seventy-three years old, and far abler to preach than i was at twenty-three." ten years later, the old man writes, "i have entered into the eighty-third year of my age. i am never tired, either with preaching, writing or travelling." and yet his emotions had tremendous intensity. he held thousands of miners in breathless silence for an hour and a half at a time. when he was ill, he exclaimed that if he could only go into the pulpit for two hours, and have a good sweat he thought he might recover. his secret of health was "a little more work." that was the tonic that cured worry and dissipated all clouds.
the moral courage of john wesley is one of the wonderful spectacles of history. he lived in a brutal, cruel century. the crowds did not stop with jeers, oaths, vulgar epithets. it was a time when disputes were marked by all the savagery of a spanish bull-fight.[pg 158] wesley gives the details of these persecutions and without complaint. the period between june 1743, and february 1744, was particularly trying. an organized movement was carried on to intimidate the people from following wesley. in several cities the methodists were beaten and plundered by a rabble that broke into their houses, destroyed their victuals and goods, threatened their lives, and abused their women. during that winter wesley received many blows, occasionally lost part of his clothing and was often covered with dirt. meanwhile, enemies went on in advance to sow the towns with wild scandals, and stir up strife and storm, but wesley went on building churches, developing schools, training lay preachers, organizing his people to take care of the class during his absence.
wesley was a scholar, and prepared his sermons with the greatest care. he was also a flaming evangelist, and therefore was freed from what robertson of brighton describes as "the treadmill necessity of being always ready twice a week with earnest thoughts on solemn themes." like beecher, wesley was not afraid of repeating his sermons. like wendell phillips, he thought a lecturer was never in shape until he had one hundred nights of delivery back of him. having heard a good[pg 159] man say, "once in seven years i burn all my sermons," wesley answered, "i cannot write a better sermon on the good steward than i did seven years ago; i cannot write a better on the great assize than i did twenty years ago; i cannot write a better on the use of money than i did thirty years ago."
as an orator, wesley had many wonderful gifts. not a large man, he was compact and strong, with nerves of silk and sinews of steel. in moments of impassioned speech he seemed to tower and take on the dimensions of a giant. his portraits show him to have been a man of fine figure, and beautiful face, with firm lips, mobile and sensitive, eyes bright and kindly. his complexion was very beautiful, fair, clear and somewhat ruddy. his forehead was broad, and beautifully curved. his voice was called the finest instrument of its kind in england, always saving that of whitefield. during his college days he made a reputation as an accurate scholar, and a keen and skillful logician. all his life long he retained his analytic method, and was always working upon his sermons. he was a master of keen, arrowy sentences. his sermons abound in short paragraphs. his illustrations are simple, but so perfectly related to his thought, that they become a part of the[pg 160] argument itself. the chief characteristic of his style is its clearness. he excelled in the searching force of the application, and tested the result of each address by the number of hearers whom he had persuaded to change their lives at a given moment.
little by little he developed a kingly authority. he carried the atmosphere of gentle supremacy. "how did you know that theseus was a god?" the answer was: "i recognized apollo by his speech; mars by his thunderbolts; minerva by her wisdom, but i knew that theseus was a god, because whatsoever he did, whether he sat, or whether he walked or whatsoever he did, he conquered." john wesley was a natural king, ruling men by the divine right of moral supremacy. one day a mob threatened to tear him in pieces. "i called," wesley writes, "for a chair. suddenly the winds were hushed, and all was calm and still; my heart was filled with love; my eyes with tears; my mouth with arguments. the leaders were amazed; they were ashamed; they were melted down; they devoured every word." at the end of the sermon the leader, who held a stone in his hand, with which to strike wesley, seemed transformed. he turned to his followers and shouted, "if any man dares to lift a hand[pg 161] against mr. wesley he will have to reckon with me first!" those who came to curse remained to pray.
wesley has had scores of biographers, and every one of them seems to have emphasized the happiness and the serene cheerfulness of his daily life. if there ever lived a man who dwelt in constant sunshine, and maintained unbroken tranquillity and peace amidst endless storm and tumult, that man was john wesley. he cared nothing about a great house, servants, equipage, money. it is said that the profits of his various publications were about $150,000, but he gave this money away as fast as it came in. he discovered the simple life long before pastor wagner. he ate sparingly, cared nothing for rich foods or costly raiment. he loved the temperate zone, far removed alike from luxury and poverty. he never wrote a creed. in welcoming a member into his company he asked two questions, "is thine heart right? if it be, give me thine hand. dost thou love and serve god? it is enough. i give thee the right hand of fellowship." in that spirit, when members of other churches came to him he bade them keep their own creed if only "they did love and serve god, and desired to save souls."
[pg 162]and so his work spread into every land. asbury, the great pioneer, rode his horse to and fro over the alleghany mountains, preaching in hundreds of settlements between the atlantic coast and the mississippi river. simpson, with his unrivalled eloquence, travelled from state to state for forty years, founding churches, charging class leaders, consecrating lay preachers, placing the torch in the hand of some gifted youth, and sending him out to light a thousand other tapers. taylor made his way across india with its three hundred millions, and in every cannibal island in the south seas and along the path through the jungles of africa, went the followers of wesley. it is a wonderful story. for the man who counted himself the friend of all the churches and the enemy of none "has liberalized, broadened and sweetened every christian faith."
the year 1741 brought the beginning of wesley's plan of world evangelization. he saw that the millions of the human race would never be reached by a handful of preachers. he tells us that it was as if a veil had fallen from his eyes, after which he saw clearly that jesus used lay disciples, both men and women, for the spread of his life and teaching. holding a candle in his hand, wesley lighted[pg 163] another candle, and watched the flame leap from taper to taper. he organized each group of one hundred converts into a class and pledged them to come together in a meeting, when each disciple was to tell the story of what the living christ had done for him. he saw that merchants advertised their cotton and their woollen goods; that manufacturers went everywhither telling other men the advantages of the new loom, or locomotive; and instead of having one minister to confess christ before five hundred dumb hearers, wesley conceived the idea of dedicating each of the five hundred hearers, not to dumbness but to full speech, and to send them forth, from house to house, and mine to mine, and school to school.
scientists tell us that the gulf stream, made up of individual drops of water, each of which has been warmed by the tropic sun, bathes england and turns a land that is as far north as labrador into a land of fruit and flowers. and from that hour, if other churches had one minister, to five hundred disciples, wesley dedicated laymen and laywomen to the task of going forth into all the world to tell the story of the love of god to sinful men.
the movement he started is still advancing in the world. it was wesley who gave the[pg 164] impulse to wilberforce, the emancipator, to howard, the prison reformer, to livingstone, the missionary, to the booths with their work for the submerged classes. above any other man in modern times he made it plain to the miner, the peasant, and the criminal, that they must achieve eminence through penitence and obedience, love and self-sacrificing service. having turned multitudes to righteousness, his name now shines like the brightness of the firmament, and will continue to shine like the stars for ever and ever.
john wesley mastered another secret—he knew how to die gloriously. in his last hours, moody, the evangelist, turned with smiles to a friend, and whispered, "they were all wrong. there is no valley, and no shadow." wesley died with that memorable word upon his lips, "the best of all is, god is with us." he preached his last sermon on february 23, 1791. his last letter was addressed to wilberforce, and was a protest against the horrors of slavery. a few weeks before, he had given the first five days of the new year to the task of walking through the streets of london, soliciting alms for the relief of the poor. in those days his appearance in the street was the signal for all passers-by to uncover. men revered him as a noble saint. he died singing,[pg 165] in the spirit of serene happiness and outbreaking joy:
"i'll praise my maker while i've breath and when my voice is lost in death, praise shall employ my nobler powers."
great was the power of the soldier, napoleon; wonderful the genius of his opponent wellington, the victor; marvellous the influence of pitt, with his vision of the expansion of england as a world power; but more wonderful, a thousand times, the influence of john wesley, carried to his grave by six very poor men, but whose work is memorable, whose influence is immortal, and whose spirit is inshrined in the hearts of millions of his grateful followers.
