A succession of persecutions attended him and his followers on their way, and yet very little could be alleged to their discredit. In Cornwall, Edward Greenfield, a tanner, with a wife and seven children, was arrested under a warrant signed by Dr. Borlase, the eminent antiquarian, who was a bitter foe to Methodism. Wesley appeared to vindicate his friend, and he first inquired what objection there was to the peaceable, inoffensive man. The answer was, 'The man is well enough in other things, but the gentlemen cannot bear his impudence; why, Sir, he says that he knows his sins are forgiven!' When Bernardine of Sienna preached at Bologna, the people brought out their dice-tables and burnt them in the streets; when Antony of Padua preached at Pavia, he saw impure books and pictures committed to immense flames; and even more remarkable, when Savonarola preached in Florence, the woman left off painting their faces, and decorating their hair. The results of Wesley's preaching were scarcely less remarkable. The story is well known how in one place a whole waggon-load of Methodists had been taken before a magistrate, but when he asked what they had done, a deep silence fell over the court, for no one was very well prepared with any charge against them; at length some one exclaimed that 'they pretended to be better than other people, and prayed from morning till night;' and another said, 'They haveconvartedmy wife; till she went among them she had such a tongue, but now she's as quiet as a lamb.' 'Take them back, take them back,' said the sensible magistrate, 'and let them convert all the scolds in the town.' We are amazed when we attempt to realize all the causeless conflicts through which many of these holy enthusiasts passed, certainly the world in all its force was against them; no wild anti-popery riots were more unreasonable and brutal than the turbulent mobs which tore down houses and insolently assaulted women and men for their attachment to the new movement. Attempts were often made on Wesley's life in Cornwall; wild cries rosearound him, 'Away with him!' 'Kill him at once!' 'Crucify the dog!' Stones and bricks were frequently hurled at him; often he might have said, 'My soul is among lions.' Staffordshire was scarcely behind Cornwall in the rough assaults. Quiet men were pressed for soldiers, and sent as prisoners to jail, simply because they were Methodists; hot-headed Hanoverians did their best to make the whole Methodist body disloyal, and both John and Charles Wesley were arrested or taken before the magistrates upon suspicion of being favourable to the Pretender. Thus Charles was brought before the magistrates at Wakefield, and five witnesses were ready to swear that he had either prayed or preached about the return of the 'Banished One,' the well-known and tender words of the wise woman of Tekoa, being supposed to convey some sinister allusion to the exiled Stuarts. It was the age of mobs and riots; for a long time the preaching of Wesley appears to have been greeted by turbulencies as wild and vehement as those which give a disgraceful notoriety to the name of John Wilkes or Lord George Gordon.
So astonishing were the results of these very simple and Christ-like ministrations, that there was surely something of the supernatural in the man Wesley. It is part of the very nature of Christianity to believe that from time to time the Church is invigorated by extraordinary impulses of divine life find grace, and singular effusions of the Holy Spirit: and to those who are able to reach at all the idea of supernatural causes in the Christian life, it is not difficult to apprehend the reality of such impulses. There was surely much that was remarkable in Wesley; it is unquestionable that strange influences seemed to attend him. His words, it has been remarked, seemed to possess a mesmeric power; his proximity to the supernatural has often been made the subject of criticism. Extraordinary circumstances which Southey, Richard Watson, Isaac Taylor, and other eminent writers have found to be perfectly inexplicable upon principles of natural reasoning marked his ministry; we read of innumerable instances of individual convulsions, and of multitudes falling prostrate to the ground before his words; cold and imperturbable natures were suddenly overwhelmed. Wesley was quite a believer in the visible and oral manifestation of the 'powers of the world to come;' such instances were especially prominent in the earlier part of his singular course. We have no remarks to make upon these phenomena, nor shall we inquire whether they may or may not be accounted for on merely natural principles; the facts remain unquestioned. One thing is certain, as when Peter preached, so at the preaching of Wesley, innumerable thousands were 'pricked to the heart, and exclaimed, "What shall we do?"'
The power of Wesley's teaching may probably be traced to the fact that it dealt with sin as sin, and with souls as souls; but then the whole doctrine was suffused in the fulness, the sufficiency, and the sweetness of Jesus, and it was a mighty reaction against the indifference and injustice of the age. The party formed against Wesley represented the higher classes, bishops and men whose minds and hearts it would seem were incapable of sympathy for the suffering and the poor, and for those who were out of the way; coarse ribalds like Lavington, the Bishop of Exeter, or dilettanti gentlemen like Horace Walpole, buffoons and time servers like Foote, or even hard theologians like Toplady, their doctrines tinctured with the harsh and morbid severity of the times, when, as we have seen, reckless disregard for life, a claim over it for the most insignificant offences, must have tended to give a rigour and narrowness to many religious ideas. Wesley's audiences were chiefly composed of the poor. The early Methodist was a very simple, perhaps usually an ignorant, man, but he had that light which 'lighteth every man that cometh into the world.' The Methodist was not such an one as the Puritan of other days, who was a sort of Knight of the Iron Hand, a Nonconformist crusader, whose theology had trained him to the battle-field, nerved him to frown defiance upon kings, and to treat as worthy only of contempt the unsanctified nobles of the earth. The Methodist was not such an one; he was as loyal as he was lowly, he had been forgotten or passed by, by priests and Levites, but suddenly he found himself raised to the rank of a living soul—a voice had reached him assuring him that he, too, was in possession of a soul. Over the country the ground, on the whole, was easy to Wesley to win; there was no education, there were no conflicts of opinion, there were no popular books, the people had no objects to claim their attention, the towns were far apart, and connected only by the mail or stagecoach, or that heavy and much more romantic-looking than agreeable conveyance, the market-cart; there was little popular excitement, there were only coarse amusements. It is unquestionable that the people had far fewer religious interests than in the old days of popery, the entire services of the Church were bald and uninteresting, there was no music, unless of such a description as to move the passions by shattering the nerves,—therewas no popular psalmody worthy of the name; thus the religious nature was entranced or buried. But the Methodist was one who had heard the call of God, conscience had been stirred within him, and a new life had created new interests; for Christianity really ennobles a man, gives him self-respect, shows to him a new purpose and business in life, and stirs the spirit, moreover, with a pulse of joy and cheerfulness; hence Methodism created the necessity for meetings and for frequent reciprocations. There were no chapels, or but few, and none to open their doors to these strange new pilgrims to the celestial city. The churches, of course, were closed against them;—what could be done, for they must speak together. Reciprocation was the soul of Methodism; almost all the great religious movements have been instituted and marked by some sign—Dominic invented the rosary, Loyola the spiritual contemplations and the retreat, Wesleyanism created Class-meetings; this constituted its essential symbolism. A church can scarcely long maintain a standing without a symbol. This is the countersign of parties and sects. So these people assembled in each other's houses, in rude and homely rooms, by farm ingles, in lone hamlets; thus was created a homely piety, rugged enough, but full of beautiful and pathetic instincts. When the faith became more consciously objective, it was possessed by that singular belief ruling the Church in all such movements—the belief in the power, conjoined to the desire to save souls. This drove them out on great occasions to call the vast multitudes together on heaths and moors. Occasionally, but this was at a later period, some country gentleman threw open his old hall to the preachers; but the more aristocratic phase of the Methodist movement fell into the Calvinistic rather than into the Wesleyan ranks; these last sought the sequestered places of nature, or in cities and towns they took to the streets, outlying fields or broadways; in some neighbourhoods a little room was built containing the germ of what in a few years became a large Wesleyan society. The burden of all their meetings and their intercourse, whether in speech or song, was the sweetness and fullness of Jesus; they had an intense faith in the love of God shed abroad in the heart; their great solicitude was that souls were on the brink of perdition. This was to them more than spiritual difficulties, mere interior trials, or speculative despair; these were mostly aterra incognitato them. Wesley dealt, as it has been expressed, with sin as sin, and with souls as souls; he had little regard to mere proprieties. Wesley and his preachers, 'out of breath pursuing souls,' seemed to many ungraceful, undignified, their faces weary, their hands heavy with toil. Yet these men had found, such as it was, a definite creed, and, as in the case of their great leader, all the inexhaustible variety and world-wide energy of other minds were in them concentrated into a burning instinct; the word of 'the Lord was like fire, or like a hammer.' The early Methodists had also the mighty instincts of prayer—to them there was a meaning in it and a joy. So these men pursued their way. God's ministry goes on by various means, ordinary and extraordinary; it is the difference between rivers and rains, between the dews and the lightnings, the rivers are exhaled by the sun and return to the earth in rains, the Severn and the Wye roll their beautiful forces through the meadow and along the hill-side, but if they did not give their waters to the sun and the cloud, and fall back upon the earth as dew and showers, they would cease from their channels among the hills. So Methodism availed itself of the ordinary and extraordinary.
All truly holy souls, even those the most opposed in their pews or their studies, meet and melt and mingle in song; holy song is the solvent of the most divergent creeds. Perhaps the greater number of the early Methodists were not pressed by physical want; concern for the soul was the grand business, in many instances possibly it was a wild and even diseased feeling. There was no art, no splendid form of worship or ritual; early Methodism was as free from all this as Clairvaux, in the valley of Wormwood, when Bernard ministered there with all his monks around him, or as Cluny, when Bernard de Morlaix chanted his 'Jerusalem the Golden.' Methodism, like all the great religious movements which have shaken men's souls, was purely spiritual, or, if it had a sensuous expression, it was not artificial; loud 'Amens!' resounded as Wesley preached, spoke, or prayed, and then the hearty gushes of, perhaps, not melodious song united all hearts in some Wesleyan Litany or Te Deum. It was so throughout the whole land; such cyclones of spiritual power mysteriously visit our world from age to age, but this surely was one in which there was infinitely more to bless and benefit, and far less to which good taste or good sense could take any exception, than in perhaps any of the great preceding waves of spiritual power which had rolled over Europe. It was the ascetic type set forth by Wesley in an age of animal and sensual indulgence. It was principally by fightingwith the sins of the age, at the same time by laying hold upon its characteristics, and especially by remembering that man is more than a machine to fill rich men's pockets, or to digest victuals—a soul, in fact, for whom Christ died—that Methodism 'grew mightily, and prevailed.'
The strength of a great and popular leader is especially shown in his power to infuse his own spirit into the minds of other men, thus constituting an organized band of kindred helpers; never surely was there a man who more remarkably abides this test than Wesley, and he became the general of a remarkable order. Protestantism may well, with Wesley to adduce, challenge Rome to produce any superior illustration of spiritual power. Archbishop Manning has spoken of St. Benedict, St. Francis, St. Dominic, and St. Ignatius, chiefs of the orders they created, as the four rivers of the water of life; it is a singular illustration and not creditable to the archbishop's piety or good taste; but if Wesley be compared with these great fathers of the Romish Church, he shines brilliantly in the comparison. Mr. Tyerman enthusiastically inquires, 'Is it not true that Methodism is the greatest fact in the history of the Church of Christ?' We may reply we do not think so, and may yet be prepared to render almost equal homage with Mr. Tyerman to this stupendous spiritual organization. John Wesley very soon poured his animating spirit into other men, and the history of Jesuitism—that marvellous story of the conquest of the human mind—does not exhibit anything like so striking an array of heroic and glorious achievements. Rome would make much of such a history, had she to recite it of herself. The names of those who surround Wesley as his fellow-labourers and helpers are, indeed, all of them humble men; no courtly or episcopal favour smiled upon him or them as they passed along. He had absolutely nothing but the pure Gospel, by the proclamation of which he sought to awaken human interest and to command attention; but soon there came a host, of whom it might be said, 'There went with him a band of men whose hearts God had touched.' The mind of England seemed to be waiting for that which Wesley brought to it. Spiritually dead as the Church of England was, many clergymen, responsive to his call, shook off their lethargy, and several, like William Grimshaw, of Haworth, laboured heartily with the apostle of Methodism. The right material was constantly at hand so soon as it was needed, in men who have almost passed away from memory, but whose 'record is on high.' We have no space for the review of that long gallery of interesting portraits of marked and remarkable men; only we notice there seemed to be a hand for every kind of work that had to be accomplished; one to lead on the polemic work of the disputant, and another, or others, to pour forth hymns; some to sway, by rugged but splendid powers of persuasion, immense masses of people; others to minister in localities and gather up the lost sheep into folds; and others to visit in prison, or in those scenes where the tender voice and the ministering hand were needed, while all bowed before the omnific mind of Wesley. Few lives are more startling than that of John Nelson; few types of saintly holiness are higher than Thomas Walsh; Thomas Maxfield has generally been supposed to be the first of the long line of lay preachers to whose exertions Methodism owes so much; while John and Thomas Oliver, John Haine, George Story, and Sampson Staniforth, and a number of other goodly names, represent lives of such intense earnestness, holiness, and activity, as would certainly win them a place in a Catholic calendar of saints, and are so full of glowing adventure, that the story of many of them would keep a boy's eyes from winking even late in the night.
Simultaneously with Wesley came the singular apparition of Whitefield, who fell into no groove of Church routine or life, although undoubtedly standing on the Calvinistic side of Methodist opinion. It is interesting to compare these two men together. Whitefield sprang upon the world ready armed as a youth of twenty, and finished his career in the prime of life; he seems almost to realize, if it can be realized, the idea of an abstract soul. We read his words, and they are nothing; but those words uttered by him broke down, overwhelmed, and dissolved all prejudices. What must he have been to whom such strong men, such courtly, artificial, yet highly cultured men, such sceptical and inaccessible men as Bolingbroke, and Chesterfield, and David Hume, and Garrick, and Benjamin Franklin, 'were as tow,' while he was as 'a spark' to kindle all into consuming flame. Not immediately connected with Wesley's organization, this mysterious and marvellous man, an entire soul of all-embracing love and compassion, greatly aided the movement;—equally at home in preaching in the select saloons of the Countess of Huntingdon, to Dukes and Duchesses and arrays of Peers, or in the wildest and most furious and murderous mobs. Whitefield is a mystery to us; he only seems to burn with an incandescent heat, so that words shrivel, and evaporate in the flame of that pure, ingenuous, generous, and whollyconsecrated soul; and this, notwithstanding the melody of that full, clear, all-encompassing voice, varying to every passionate accent, sinking to the most penetrating entreaty, swelling to the most rousing apostrophe. In the full careering heat of his speech, Whitefield became, unconsciously to himself, poet, philosopher, psychologist, thus enabling us to understand something of his stupendous power, even while we are still perplexed as to its cause. No melody or poetry shines through the words of his published discourses; but no pictures we have ever met with of inspired, rapt oratory, are more surprising than those which are presented to us by his contemporaries of Whitefield's preaching, on the slope of some mountain or hill, the trees and hedges full of people hushed to profound silence, the open firmament above him, the green fields around him, the sight of thousands on thousands of people, some in coaches, some on horseback, gathered around him and all affected—melted to tears. When the evening approached, he once said, 'Beneath the twilight it was too much, and quite overcame me!' One night he describes a time never to be forgotten: it lightened exceedingly; he preached the warnings and the consolations of the coming of the Son of Man; the thunder broke over his head, the lightning gleamed upon his path; it ran along the ground, and shone from one part of the heavens to the other. His spirit rose above the storm; he longed for the time when Christ should be revealed in flaming fire. 'Oh,' exclaims he, 'that my soul may live in a like flame, when He shall actually come to call me!'
But Wesley's success! Wesley, as an orator, seems still more inconceivable. By all accounts Whitefield was seraphic. Wesley seldom rose beyond penetrating good sense, and nothing appears to have transported him out of his invariable calm. Yet the effects of his oratory were even still more wonderful; there was something of magnetism in it. Henry Moore, his great friend, says, 'At this moment, I well remember my first thought after hearing him preach nearly fifty years ago;spiritualthings are natural things to that man;' In innumerable instances we find audiences shaken as by a mighty wind, hurled down, agonizing, screaming aloud; there was much more of all this in Wesley's preaching than in Whitefield's, yet in Whitefield's we should expect it more. Wesley, in the style of his oratory, seems to have been judicial, and our readers are not unaware of the remarkable power that quiet statement is able to exercise. Who so passionless apparently as Jonathan Edwards, a man who would have disdained every approach to sensationalism, whose entire mode of pulpit delivery was obnoxious to all ideas of pulpit oratory, and whose whole scheme of thought and expression were as calm and clear as logical metaphysics could make them? yet what scenes he witnessed when he preached? Thus it was eminently with Wesley; crowds thronged around him intent to listen wherever he appeared; if the face was beautiful, the height of the body was so far beneath the average standard that it seems almost contemptible for the holding of such powers as he wielded; and then the voice, not less than the manner, appears to have been unfitted to carry tempests of passion—nor did he desire that it should; we suppose that it must have been singularly clear and penetrating, and that every sentence was sharply cut and elaborated, not by preparation and the pen, but by convictions deep and indelible. Such sentences carried upon a clear penetrating voice—and in oratory the voice is all but everything—will achieve more than more plausible means. It is fervour which fires, but fervour often burns more effectually in the still, white, soundless heat, than in what seems to be the most raging flame. There must have been considerable natural dignity in the man. 'Be silent, or begone,' he said on one occasion to some who were molesting him in preaching, and the intruders were silenced. The traditions of Methodism are rich in the recollection of such scenes;—the scenes of Gwennap Pit for instance. This is a natural excavation, three miles from Redruth, an amphitheatre, formed by nature, whose walls are from seven to eight hundred feet in height, and which is capable of holding from twenty-five to thirty thousand persons. This was one of Wesley's most famous churches. Year after year this most spacious and magnificent cathedral amongst the wild moors of Cornwall was crowded by vast and hushed assemblies. Until Wesley's day, all that immense population might have said, 'No man cared for our souls.' Wild, rugged miners and fishermen of whom it was true that they never breathed a prayer except for the special providence of a shipwreck—men whose wicked barbarity in kindling delusive lights along the coast to allure unfortunate ships to the cruel cliffs of those dangerous shores, had won for their region the name of 'West Barbary.' Now, as if some power had passed over them, clothed anew and in their right minds, they assembled to greet and gladden their venerable father in that wild glen, creating a strange and not unbeautiful life in the stillness of that desolate and romantic spot,and worshipping with the birds overhead and the broom and the wild flowers under foot, under the overhanging shadow of the venerable rocks. Truly it must have been a sublime thing to have heard that great multitude peal out in Wesley's own words:—
'Suffice that for the season past,Hell's horrid language filled our tongues,We all thy words behind us cast,And loudly sang the drunkard's songs.But, oh! the power of grace divine,In hymns we now our voices raise,Loudly in strange hosannas join,And blasphemies are turned to praise.'
'Suffice that for the season past,
Hell's horrid language filled our tongues,
We all thy words behind us cast,
And loudly sang the drunkard's songs.
But, oh! the power of grace divine,
In hymns we now our voices raise,
Loudly in strange hosannas join,
And blasphemies are turned to praise.'
Twenty-five thousand persons! and it is said he was able to make everyone hear his words; wonderful, whether we think of the acoustical properties of the church itself, the attentiveness the preacher could command, or the marvellous strength, the clearness and fulness of his voice.
Of all the helpers from whom Wesley derived assistance essential to the carrying on his work, his brother Charles was the most providential. He was a narrow ecclesiastic, and often troublesome, but he did good service. Much as Wesley loved the service of the Church of England, it was utterly impossible to employ it in the work he set himself to perform; but it has been felt again and again, whether it has been expressed or not, that a religious service without liturgies is impossible. People may disclaim and disown the word liturgy, and substitute for it psalms and hymns, the fact remains the same; psalms and hymns are liturgies in rhyme—liturgies sung instead of said. Congregations need to be held together; the voice of a solitary soul is not enough for religious purposes, and especially for the pressure of overwrought emotions; multitudes require something more than a mere monologue. Wesley arose at a time when that popular and united form of worship, the hymn, had but just ceased to be regarded as an innovation. There were Churches in London—Maze Pond, for instance—which had divided upon the question of singing, and the unmusical members went off, and formed a community of their own, undistracted by notes of song. Watts had only just published some of his psalms and hymns, when Wesley came down among the people and began to move to and fro amongst his congregations. The want of simple forms of prayer and praise was soon felt. No doubt his recent acquaintance with the Moravians had given him invaluable suggestions, of which he was prepared to avail himself. Amidst much which was worse than foolish, the Moravians had, as he knew, many inspiring psalms, and a far greater variety of metre than English devotional verse had heretofore employed. Some of the most magnificent hymns in the Wesleyan collection are Wesley's translations from Zinzendorf and other German psalmists; but the fulness and splendour of Wesleyan psalmody was developed by Charles Wesley. His hymns have been the liturgies of Methodism, the creeds of that Church have been embodied in them, they have formed its collects, and enshrined its loftiest bursts of devotional ardour. What sentiment of Christian experience is there which does not find an utterance in them? What phase of Methodist faith is there which is not translated into some of these verses? In preparing the hymn-book, indeed, a great number of Watts's hymns were included, and included not only without any acknowledgment, but the preface, from the pen of John, claims for the Wesleys all the hymns in the volume. In this condition the hymn-book remains to this day, and we have often conversed with Methodists who have stoutly maintained that certain hymns in the volume legitimately belong to it, although published by Watts years before its compilation. This, however, in no way interferes with the estimate we have to form of these sacred lyrics; of course, the Methodist estimate of them is that they are the highest achievements of sacred song. That which we are constantly using, and which touches our affections becomes supremely precious and dear to us. They are all eminently experimental; they seem to have been constructed for the class-meeting and band-meeting; they are especially conjubilant, hymns well calculated to excite and stir, and carry aloft the feelings of the people; and they have become—they very soon became—the voices of the Church.
Wesley, in his reformation, soon commenced the work of reforming the singing. Throughout his life and labours he often remarks upon the questionable psalmody by which he was greeted; thus at Warrington, he says:—
'I put a stop to a bad custom which was creeping in here; a few men, who had fine voices, sang a psalm which no one knew, in a tune fit for an opera, wherein three, four, or five persons sung different words at the same time; what an insult to common sense! what a burlesque upon public worship! no custom can excuse such a mixture of profanity and absurdity.'
Elsewhere he says,—
'Beware of formality in singing, or it will creep upon us unawares; is it not creeping in already by those complex tunes which it isscarce possible to sing with devotion? Such is the long quavering "Hallelujah," and next, the morning song tune, which I defy any man living to sing devoutly, the repeating the same words so often, especially while another repeats different words, shocks all common sense, brings in dead formality, and has no more religion in it than a Lancashire hornpipe.'
In harmony with the Hymns, he introduced tunes, which appropriately rendered the words, and were soon used throughout the whole communion; from one end of the country to the other these have echoed and rolled; few are the circumstances in which they have not awakened or sustained some thrilling emotion. They hailed the bridal party as it returned from the church singing,—
'We kindly help each other,Till all shall wear the starry crown.'
'We kindly help each other,
Till all shall wear the starry crown.'
they followed the bier to the grave chanting—
'There all the ship's company meet,Who sail'd with their Saviour beneath;With shouting, each other they greet,And triumph o'er sorrow and death.'
'There all the ship's company meet,
Who sail'd with their Saviour beneath;
With shouting, each other they greet,
And triumph o'er sorrow and death.'
And few separations took place without that consolotary song,—
'Blest be that dear uniting love,That will not let us part.'
'Blest be that dear uniting love,
That will not let us part.'
While some hymns speedily became like national airs to the Methodist heart: amongst the chief,—
'Jesus, the name high over allIn hell or earth or sky.'
'Jesus, the name high over all
In hell or earth or sky.'
They sob, they swell, they meet the spirit in its most hushed and plaintive mood; they roll and bear it aloft in its most inspired and prophetic moods, as on the surge of more than a mighty organ's swell. Among the mines, and quarries, and wild moors of Cornwall, among the factories of Lancashire and Yorkshire, in the chambers of death, in the most joyful assemblages of the household, they have relieved the hard lot, and sweetened the pleasant one; in other lands, soldiers, and slaves, and prisoners have recited with what joy those words have entered into their life. So early as 1748, when a sad cluster of convicts, horse-stealers, highway robbers, burglars, smugglers, and thieves, were led forth to execution, the turnkey said he had never seen such people before. When the bellman came, as usual, to say to them, 'Remember, you are to die to-day;' they exclaimed, 'Welcome news! welcome news!' The Methodists had been in their prison, and their visits had produced these marvellous effects; and on their way to Tyburn, the convicts sang that beautiful sacramental hymn of Charles Wesley:—
'Lamb of God, whose bleeding loreWe still recall to mind;Send the answer from above,And let us mercy find.Think on us who think on Thee,And every struggling soul release;Oh, remember Calvary,And let us go in peace.'
'Lamb of God, whose bleeding lore
We still recall to mind;
Send the answer from above,
And let us mercy find.
Think on us who think on Thee,
And every struggling soul release;
Oh, remember Calvary,
And let us go in peace.'
These hymns supplied battle-cries for all the scenes of open-air aggression and warfare. When Charles Wesley himself was preaching at Bengeworth, he was beset by a mob. He says, 'Their tongues were set on fire by hell!' One in the crowd proposed to take him away and duck him; he broke out into singing with Thomas Maxfield, and allowed them to carry him whither they would. At the bridge end of the street they relented and left him; there, instead of retreating, he took his stand, and, with an immense congregation about him, sang,—
'Angel of God, whate'er betide,Thy summons I obey;Jesus, I take Thee for my guide,And walk in Thee, my way.'
'Angel of God, whate'er betide,
Thy summons I obey;
Jesus, I take Thee for my guide,
And walk in Thee, my way.'
Innumerable anecdotes might be accumulated touching the glories and triumphs of Methodist song. With all our higher love and admiration for Isaac Watts, and our feeling that, as a sacred poet, he had a more lofty and gorgeous wing, even a far more, tender and touching expression, and that in some of his hymns he speaks in a manner of strength altogether far more wonderful, nevertheless it is true that to Charles Wesley must be given the merit of, perhaps, the most perfect of all hymns, as the expression of Christian experience,—
'Jesus, lover of my soul.'
'Jesus, lover of my soul.'
It is necessary to have some apprehension of the Theology of Methodism, for the spirit of Methodism was in its theology, even as the soul of that theology was in its hymns. It met the heart at that point of experience at which it felt its need of God, a living God: consciousness pervaded it everywhere. This was the central teaching of the great evangelical reaction. How well does it compare and contrast with the contemplations and exercises of Loyola in the solitude of the Manreza; and also with the 'De Imitatione' of à Kempis, against which, large as has been the regard for it, a certain instinct of the Church has always testified. The theology of Methodism was, in one word, Christ for the conscience. Those, happily, were not the days of scientific theology; as a scientificstatement the theology of Wesley has justly been regarded as defective, but it is possible to be defective in comprehensive knowledge, and yet to have a sufficiently full and clear understanding for practical uses; even as it is possible to work an engine well, and yet in no sense to be an accomplished engineer. The secret of Wesley's success lay in the fact that his was a theology for the multitude; on the one hand it was not a forensic theory, on the other it was not rationalistic. Both are alike unsatisfactory to the heart. There is a forensic theology, but it is for the schools rather than for the factories or the fields. 'Wesley,' says Alexander Knox, 'regarded justification neither merely nor chiefly as a forensic acquittal in the court of heaven, but as implying also a conscious liberation from moral thraldom.' Indeed this was the important point with him; consciousness, everywhere consciousness. It is in the consciousness faith is to be wrought, as he sings—
'Inspire the living faith,Which whosoe'er receives,The witness in himself he hath,Andconsciouslybelieves.'
'Inspire the living faith,
Which whosoe'er receives,
The witness in himself he hath,
Andconsciouslybelieves.'
The strife ran very high upon matters where the disputants were not substantially divided; the doctrine of personal election and reprobation, Wesley, indeed, denounced in some of his most vehement words; and it seemed that the imputed righteousness of Christ, and in consequence, the doctrine of the substitution of Christ for the sinner, paled and became ineffective in his teaching. This was especially manifested in his controversy with the beloved and amiable rector of Weston Favell, James Hervey, on the publication of his 'Theron and Aspasio.' Hervey says, 'The righteousness wrought out by Jesus Christ is wrought out for all His people,' &c. Wesley replies, with truth and force, but with needless vehemence, 'What becomes of all other people? They must inevitably perish for ever. The die was cast ere ever they were in being. The doctrine to pass them by has consigned their unborn souls to hell, and damned them from their mother's womb. I could sooner be a Turk, a deist, yea, an atheist, than I could believe this. It is less absurd to deny the very being of God, than to make Him an Almighty tyrant.' It was Wesley's great and favourite faith that 'in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him.' In some hymns he expresses, however, very unreservedly the doctrine of substitution for instance—
'Join earth and heaven to blessThe Lord our righteousness;The mystery of redemption this,This the Saviour's strange design;Man's offence was counted His,Ours His righteousness divine.'
'Join earth and heaven to bless
The Lord our righteousness;
The mystery of redemption this,
This the Saviour's strange design;
Man's offence was counted His,
Ours His righteousness divine.'
Wesley dealt always with those great truths which, because of the depths of his own moral consciousness, man cannot hear announced without awe. It is possible to receive Christian doctrine as only a science, or a judicial exposition; the Calvinistic theology has too often been merely this, but the core of Wesley's creed was personal perception and appropriation of the work of Christ—in a word, Consciousness. And usually his ideas were presented in a clear and transparent style, the chief of them being salvation by faith;salvationby faith rather thanjustificationby faith. No doubt Wesley clearly and distinctly held and preached the latter, but those who have made this the principal theme of their religious teaching have been usually led into a region of thought higher than was suitable to the practical purposes of the great Methodist apostle. The designation of his doctrine, 'Evangelical Arminianism,' has often been charged with involving a contradiction in terms. The discussion of the principles of the Divine government, and the Divine decrees, the relations of fore-knowledge and predetermination in the Infinite mind, impressions concerning the freedom of the will and the nature of evil—such questions, it must be admitted, are more curious and speculative than useful, or sometimes even pious. Wesley was no metaphysician, he had little taste for such studies; and his life was passed in a round of useful activities unfavourable to their prosecution. Into the department of thought which implies the relation of logic to theology, he never entered. Alike in the frame-work of his popular creed, as we shall see in the frame-work of his Church organization, he struck out a broad basis; breadth rather than depth was the characteristic of his mind and work; he cared little for the nice distinctions of philosophical refinement; his theology turned chiefly on the responsibilities of man; his aim was to make man feel, rather than to make him think. The Calvinistic side of theology produces the exactly opposite effect. Wesley, naturally, insisted strongly on the personal sanctification of the soul, this follows, of course, that other chief and much-belaboured item of Wesleyan faith, the doctrine of perfection. 'This,' says Alexander Knox, 'was the perpetual bone of contention between Wesley and the whole phalanx of Calvinist religionists.' And assuredly, that whole phalanx showed itself to be imperfect enough in the controversy. In the story of the strifes of good men thishas a shocking pre-eminence. We cannot blame Mr. Tyerman for presenting the various phases of the struggle, or even for quoting passages from the innumerable abusive volumes and pamphlets which were poured out upon Wesley, but we shall not ourselves dwell upon these scandals. On the whole, we have in Wesley the picture of a fine Christian temper and spirit, seldom condescending to reply at all, and when replying, doing so in a tone worthy even of him who could say, 'Let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.'
That Wesley should be defamed and denounced by ungodly scoffers or worldly bishops is not surprising, but that he should become the object of the ribaldry and scorn and contumely of men who were undoubtedly the children of God, is amazing. He had for long years been scourged and lampooned in newspapers, magazines, tracts, and pamphlets; Samuel Foote, the buffoon, had ridiculed him; and Lavington, the merry-andrew-bishop of Exeter, had poured out upon him volumes of ribaldry. And well says Mr. Tyerman, 'In turn Mr. Wesley had encountered mobs, and men of letters, drunken, parsons, furious papists, honest infidels, and others; but of all his enemies his last were his bitterest and worst, Calvinistic Christians.' It is a mystery to us now—and that it is so seems to prove that we have made some advances beyond our forefathers in good sense, good taste, and good manners, to say nothing of the higher attainments of Christian moderation and temper—that Christian men could ever have indulged in such envenomed speech, and that the pure air of metaphysical theology should ever have been burdened with such exhalations and such thunders. It is to the honour of Mr. Wesley that he never condescended to stoop from his work to personal recrimination, and scarcely, indeed, to personal explanation. His theology was wanting in those more noble excursions of intelligence and experience which supply strength to the spirit in seasons when a black night of doubt spreads out over the soul. Concerning the ways and means of faith, of revelation, and providence, he never attempted any solution. His mind, in all departments of it, was characterized by a quick apprehension; this was not accompanied by a power of lofty and sustained reflection; the business of his life was to train as many persons as he possibly could to habitual and orderly devotion. He taught the doctrine of the witness of the Spirit, and personal assurance of salvation, with a persistency which surely ought to have satisfied Toplady; but then his teaching had this serious difference, he conditioned assurance in the personal consciousness of the believer, while the school of Toplady fell back more securely upon the purposes, character, and promises of God. This makes the technical difference between the salvation by faith, taught by the one school, and justification by faith, taught by the other. To a profoundly experienced nature we suppose the former is included in the latter, and furnishes sources of satisfaction altogether wanting to the more narrow, plausible, and popular scheme.
Hence, so much was made of the happiness arising from states of feeling, and from the witness of the Spirit; this was to be the aim and object of the life and heart, and was the proof of that growth in the life of perfection which seems to reduce—as Coleridge has well shown in a very able note to Southey—the Christian life to a sensation: sensational assurance became the counterpart of the doctrine of sinless perfection in this life; the one is quite absolutely related to the other. It is not too much to say that Wesley quite misconceived the term 'perfect' (τέλειος) as it was used by Paul; hence it was, no doubt, that Wesley entangled himself in contradictions, and founded the religious life very much upon certain ascetic and sumptuary laws: 'Powder was antichristian; a ribbon became the sign of a carnal nature, and snuff-boxes and tobacco were the very emanations of the bottomless pit; and very innocent things became really Babylonish.' The life prescribed by Wesley was as severe as a monastic rule: his disciples were met every hour by something of which they were to deny themselves, which was to be a contradiction to them, and which they were to overcome. He insisted in the spirit of a monastic legislator, that his preachers should always preach at four or five o'clock in the morning. 'I exhort all those who desire me to watch over their souls, to wear no gold, no pearls or precious stones; use no curling of hair, or costly apparel.' 'Be serious,' was one of his favourite injunctions; 'avoid all lightness as you would hell-fire, and trifling as you would cursing and swearing; touch no woman, be as loving as you will, but the custom of the country is nothing to us.' Sometimes Wesley uses wiser words, but generally he appears to teach that deliverance from sin implies deliverance from human infirmities, and that it is almost inconsistent with temptation; and this arises apparently from an unnatural interpretation of the word 'perfect,' as we have it in the language of our Lord and in the writings of the apostles.'Truly,' says Coleridge, 'there is no point at which you can arrive in this life, in which the command, "Soar upwards still," ceases in validity or occasion.' And yet such seems to be the doctrine of Wesley: and while in a corrupt and dissolute age his rules fostered and trained innumerable holy and saintly lives, they to a very large degree gave occasion for that satire and ridicule, which indeed is not wonderful, from the scoffing world, but which is shameful when indulged in by the pens and lips of believers. The two great controversialists of Methodism, Calvinistic and Arminian, were Toplady, the vicar of Broad Hembury, and the gentle Swiss, John Fletcher, the vicar of Madely. Both argued within the circle of Scripture. We have outlived all taste for this pamphleteering kind of controversy. Toplady was the more scholarly and logical, his style was the more nervous and terse: he also was not only the more witty but the more wilful, and made his pages sparkle with a lively wickedness which is wonderful in such a writer upon such subjects, and especially in the writer of such transcendent hymns as his. Fletcher was the more sentimental and rhetorical, frequently also more characterized by a plain and earnest common sense; he was more spiritual and devout than Toplady, nor would it be possible, we suppose, to find a sentence in his famous 'Checks' unbecoming the perfect Christian gentleman, and they furnished material and ammunition for all the Wesleyan preachers, not only for that day, but for many years after. The world and the Church, however, now demand something more concise and firmly-textured than the essays of either, Toplady or of Fletcher. It is satisfactory also to feel our way to that higher plain of thought which reconciles the two. If God be infinite consciousness and thought, can the salvation and trials of any child of man be unknown to Him? If He be infinite character and will, can any event happen unpermitted by Him? If He be infinite power, can any circumstance be unordained by Him? Is He not also infinitely amiable? It is singular how combatants fetch their weapons from the same armoury, and tilt Scripture against Scripture; but both are reconciled in consciousness, and the disciples of Wesley and Toplady alike find the same reposing rest and assuring trust in the mercy of God, through faith in the righteousness of Christ.
What shall we say of the Ecclesiastical Polity framed by Wesley? This, first of all, that he never intended that his discipline should be regarded as an ecclesiastical polity. Like so many of the fathers of the Church, he founded an order; he formed a society, not a Church. He cautions his ministers against calling the society eithertheChurch oraChurch. He created a broad organization, but not the broadest. He always remembered that he was a minister and an ordained priest of the Church of England; and it was with great reluctance that he permitted himself to yield to those innovations which the polity of the Church of England would have opposed; he always desired to regard his entire fellowship as in communion with the Establishment; his arrangements for his services were, as far as possible, for times and seasons when no services were proceeding in the parish churches of the neighbourhood, and for a long time he attempted to harmonise his method of worship to the liturgic forms and devotions of the Church. Lord King's essay on the Primitive Church made him, theoretically, an Independent; yet, there can be little doubt that had there been a broader, wiser, and more tolerantrégimein the Establishment, the whole movement might have been included in the corporation of the National Church; it was surely of God that it was not so. But the Church of Rome would have known how to avail itself of such a sudden burst of energy, as in the cases of St. Francis, of Loyola, and others; the great leader and his disciples would for some time have been kept in a state of ecclesiastical quarantine, but in the course of a few years they would have been received, to pour into the mother Church the fulness of their newly-acquired life. It was a great evangelistic movement that Wesley originated and sustained; he perpetually attempted to limit and curtail the ministerial powers of his preachers; many of them, indeed, became sufficiently restive even beneath his authority, and were quite unable or unwilling to perceive the reason of the ecclesiastical refinements he taught and maintained.
Isaac Taylor has urged against Wesley that he founded an irresponsible hierarchy; he says: 'On the one side stand all Protestant Churches, Episcopal and non-Episcopal, Wesleyanism excepted; on the other side stand the Church of Rome, and the Wesleyan Conference. This position maintainedaloneby a Protestant body must be regarded as false in principle, and in an extreme degree ominous.' The position is not fairly stated. The polity of Rome is absolutely intolerant; she not merely has laws for conserving her own rights, which she claims as divine, but she treats with perfect contempt and scorn all reference to, or respect for, the rights of others. Even Frederick Faber, in his essay on Philip Neri, in a passage ofhearty eulogy on Whitefield, consigns him to hell, notwithstanding all his usefulness, when he says, 'St. Philip would have taught him to preach if he had been an oratorian novice, which, unluckily for his poor soul, George Whitefield never was.' Such is Rome. It was not so with Wesley himself, nor has it been so with his descendants. The rubric—if so we may call it—of Methodist polity has been stringent; too stringently, perhaps, laws have been enacted against those turbulent spirits, certain to emerge in all communities, endowed with a strong desire to take their own way, and to do things merely right in their own eyes; you are free to do so, says Wesley, but not beneath the sanctions of our society, unless we approve the action. There has been a strong desire to gather in and build up, but in a sense in which, perhaps, Wesleyans have not been singular; 'they have dwelt among their own people,' their fellowship, in spite of numerous schisms, has been one of the most perfect, harmonious, and useful in Christendom; but this has existed with entire respect and good-will to other denominations. Wesley himself says, one circumstance is quite peculiar to the Methodists, the terms upon which any person may be admitted into their society, 'they do not impose, in order to their admission, any opinions whatever; one conviction, and one only, is required, a real desire to save their souls; where this is, it is enough, they desire no more, they lay stress upon nothing else, they ask only, "is thy heart herein as my heart? if it be, give me thy hand." Is there any other society in Great Britain and Ireland that is so remote from bigotry? Where is there such another society in Europe—in the habitable world? I know none. Let any man show it me who can; till then, let no one talk of the bigotry of the Methodists.' 'Look to the Lord, and faithfully attend all the means of grace appointed in the society.' Such was, practically, the whole of Methodism. So that famous old lady, whose bright example has so often been held up on Methodists' platforms, when called upon to state the items of her creed, did so very sufficiently when she summed if up in the four particulars of 'Repentance towards God, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, a penny a week, and a shilling a quarter.' And certainly, beyond any other scheme or system, the organization of Methodism has developed the power of thepence—that is, the power of the people—to provide for and to sustain their religious services. The Rev. Marmaduke Miller, in a letter to theNonconformistfor May 17th, 1871, shows that the various associations in England bearing Wesley's name, and practically working out his ideas, hold and provide sittings for 3,500,000 people; they represent the membership of 624,453 persons; the number of settled ministers is 3,137, and local preachers 41,456, while the Sabbath-schools represent 1,162,423, and the teachers 197,163. What a representation of the amazing numbers of those who call Wesley father! The rules of the Methodist polity, then, were devised in no insolent spirit; wisely, or unwisely, they were framed for the conservation of order. Mr. Wesley's object in them was certainly not ecclesiastical, as he says again, 'I have no more right to object to a man for holding a different opinion from me than I have to differ from a man because he wears a wig and I wear my own hair; but if he takes his wig off, and begins to shake the powder about my eyes, I shall consider it my duty to get quit of him as soon as possible.' One cannot but think what might have been, had Hildebrand been such a man as Wesley; what might the Church of England have been had Whitgift or Laud held views so broad and tolerant as these. In effect, his polity said, 'Come amongst us, and we will seek to do each other good; join some other communion, the Lord be with you; but if you attach yourself voluntarily to our society, you accept the conditions of the society.'
The Wesleyans constitute the largest denomination in the United States, in the form of the Methodist Episcopal Church founded by the venerable Asbury, the friend and early disciple of John Wesley, and a man baptized into a like spirit of indomitable endurance, and ardent, untiring energy. But it may be questioned whether this should be regarded as a development of Wesleyanism, or a departure from Wesley's idea of Church government. Certainly much depends upon what we find implied in the designation of bishop. The Wesleyan bishop in England is called a 'superintendent;' from a Methodist's point of view the terms are almost convertible and synonymous, and we have little doubt that superintendent is the realization of the Scriptural idea of the bishop—a pastor, shepherd, or overseer. More than this Wesley did not desire his ministers to be. Had he great prescience? Was it a far-sighted sagacity which characterized his mind? Acutely he saw the present want, and met it. Probably he never realized the wholly independent attitude his followers would assume in the future; and, like the constitution of England, so the constitution of his society grew beneath his eye; he scarcely, therefore, made provisions to meet the demands of an independent Church, or community. He was perpetually engagedin furnishing expedients; his ideas never seemed to rise beyond, or to sink deeper than the present work of evangelizing the multitude, and keeping them awake, and intent on the desire for salvation. Hence he was utterly opposed to a permanent pastorate; his ministers were to be perpetually moving; to some desires expressed to himself for a longer residence, or more continued ministration of some of his preachers, he gave his most decided negative. It is a matter still of serious dispute between the Wesleyan and other Church polities, whether for the health, growth, and well-being of the individual Church, the permanent pastorate or the itinerant ministry may be regarded as best. There is something to be said on either side. We can have no doubt that the Wesleyan polity, while it may minister something to the life of Churches, and give a pleasant variety, must be a barrier to the accumulation of learning, and what is more precious of pastoral influence; and that it offers a strong inducement to intellectual indolence, to lean upon old resources rather than to go on exploring new and fresh fields. The Wesleyan polity almost denies to the minister the position of the pastor. The true pastor of each separate little cluster in a society is the class leader; he permanently resides in the town or village; he is familiar with the conversions, the experiences, the joys and sorrows of each member of the little flock. Wesley even went so far as to interdict the presence of his ministers in the classes; and the minister is still, we believe, as a rule, only occasionally present for the purpose of distributing the quarterly tickets. But the immediate followers of Wesley have now elaborated what they regard, and even term, an ecclesiastical constitution. Its government is regulated by laws sharply cut and defined for every emergency; they have their Blackstone, and Coke upon Lyttleton, and probably Mr. Wesley himself would be somewhat amazed to find such a framework of polity as the handbook of Methodist ecclesiastical law, in Edmund Grindrod's 'Compendium of the Laws and Regulations of Wesleyan Methodism.' This defines its 'ecclesiastical courts,' 'powers of the Conference,' of 'district meetings,' of 'local courts,' of the 'committee of privileges,' and the nature of all its committees and institutions. Wesleyan Methodism in England, indeed, may be defined as a constitutional republic, but of the oligarchic order of Venice or Florence. Its polity constitutes a civil rather than a spiritual despotism, but it reminds us that men are not much interested in the government of the Church of their adoption, and that Church consciousness is very independent of Ecclesiastical organization.
Yet the entire polity of Wesley was popular, and few religions communities have so successfully cultivated the spirit infused into it; it was intended to meet the religious instincts of the uncared for multitudes. Certain words of Wesley illustrate this;—a new chapel was in the course of erection at Blackburn; Wesley was taken to see it. 'I have a favour to ask,' he said; 'let there be no pews in the body of this chapel, except one for the leading singers; be sure to make accommodation for the poor, they are God's building materials in the erection of His Church; the rich make good scaffolding, but bad materials.' 'Observe,' he said again to his preachers, 'it is not your business to preach so many times, and to take care of this or that society, but to save as many souls as you can, to bring as many sinners as you possibly can to repentance, and, with all your power, to build them up in that holiness, without which they cannot see the Lord.' He knew that preaching needs to be succeeded by personal intercourse; hence he says in visiting Colchester;—'By repeated experiments we learn that though a man preach like an angel, he will neither collect, nor preserve a society which is collected, without visiting them from house to house.' And this is the key to that comprehensive and all-permeating spirit which constitutes the idea of Methodism, at once its danger as well as its defence; to become a Methodist of Wesley's order was to be, and is to be, looked up, and looked after, and overlooked. It must be admitted that the system which is so vigorously and watchfully organized, does not leave much opportunity for the mind and soul to grow: the tutoring and training hearts and minds to walk alone is a profound study. Nothing of this is contemplated in the Wesleyan system; freedom of thought has not usually fared well in the society; minds are too closely interlocked and riveted, frequently not only with other, but with inferior minds. It is therefore a community for the poor and the uneducated, or it is nothing; and if it is not like the Romish system, dangerous by the possession of an audacious hierarchy, it must be admitted that it may become so in virtue of a system of spiritual espionage scarcely less effective than the confessional.
Did John Wesley know human nature? Judging from the effects which have followed his marvellous course, it would seem so; and if severe in discipline, and intolerant to human infirmities by his system, he was most tender and merciful, even to the aberrations and stumblings of believers themselves. Heinsisted on punctilious obedience to his rules, but it was easy to him to forgive all personal injustice to himself; sometimes it seems almost as if he were even unable to feel injuries, and probably this was greatly the case: his 'place was on high, his defence the munition of rocks,' and no soul ever seems to have been more securely shielded in 'the pavilion,' where spirits are kept 'in secret from the strife of tongues.' The wicked woman who was his wife, stole a number of his letters, interpolated parts, and misrendered certain expressions; and, having been guilty at once of theft and forgery, she, in conjunction with some of his enemies, published them. It led to venomous and embittered language in the newspapers concerning them. His brother, Charles Wesley, was in the utmost consternation: he went off to Wesley, imploring him to postpone a journey he was on the eve of taking, that he might stay in London and defend himself against his enemies. He found his brother as calm ashewas excited:
'I shall never forget,' says Miss Wesley, the daughter of Charles, 'the manner in which my father accosted my mother on his return home. "My brother," said he, "is, indeed, an extraordinary man; I placed before him the importance of the character of a minister, and the evil consequences which might result from his indifference to it, and urged him by every relative and public motive to answer for himself and stop the publication. His reply was, Brother, when I devoted to God my ease, my time, my life, did I except my reputation? No, tell Sally (Charles's wife) I will take her to Canterbury to-morrow."'
Glorious John had to live down many worse persecutions than this. Ordinarily, his calm was imperturbable; and yet, divine as this often seems, it often, too, seems related to a side of character which almost indicates a defect in human nature. It has been alleged against him that he was thoroughly ignorant of the nature of children, 'Break their wills betimes,' he says; 'begin this work before they can run alone, before they can speak plain, perhaps before they can speak at all.' The method he adopted at Kingswood school was an illustration of this entire ignorance of the child's nature. It was not so much a school as a monastery, its rules were more stringent and hard than those of a workhouse. It is no wonder that it did not succeed, and that the whole system of the school had to undergo an entire modification. That Wesley's design and idea in founding the Kingswood school was benevolent, wise, and prescient, there can be no doubt, as also that the diet was sufficient and good; nor can exception be taken to the rule that the children should go to bed at eight, and sleep on hard mattresses; but to rise at four in the morning! and spend their time until five in reading, singing, meditation and prayer! no play-day and no play-hour permitted, on the ground that 'he who plays when he is a child, will play when he becomes a man!' When we read of such an arrangement made for children, the question recurs, did Wesley know human nature? Or if such a constitution might be suitable to the human nature of monks and ascetic saints, what knowledge does it exhibit of the child's heart? We like better to read an anecdote told of him when at the age of seventy-three—about the period when the letters alluded to were published. At Midsomer Norton, when preaching in the parish church he was staying at the house of a Mr. Bush, who kept a boarding-school. While he was there, two of the boys quarrelled, cuffed and kicked each other vigorously. Mrs. Bush brought the pugilists to Wesley. He talked to them and repeated the lines—