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Ten Wesley Cameos
This year, 2003,
marks the tercentenary of the birth of John Wesley.
To mark this special occasion, Dr Herbert McGonigle,
Chairman of the Wesley Fellowship, has written
ten brief cameos dealing with John and Charles
Wesley and some of the events of the 18th century
Methodist Revival in Britain.
1.
Epworth - There’s No Place Like Home
John Wesley was
born in his Epworth rectory home, Lincolnshire,
on June 17th (28th by the modern calendar) 1703.
The fifteenth of seventeen (or eighteen) children,
ten of whom survived infancy, he was brought up
in a home of love, learning and education. His
mother, Susannah Wesley, began her children’s
education on their fifth birthdays and they were
expected to learn the alphabet perfectly on the
first day! Her methods clearly worked for the
three sons all left their mother’s school
prepared to continue their classical studies at
two of England’s most prestigious public
schools; Samuel and Charles (the hymn-writer)
at Westminster School and John at Charterhouse
School. John’s journey took him from Charterhouse
to Christ Church, Oxford, where he was ordained
a clergyman of the Church of England and elected
Fellow of Lincoln College. He was an Oxford tutor
for ten years, after which he and his brother
Charles ministered to both the colonists and the
native Indians in Georgia in America.
Back home in
England both John and Charles experienced evangelical
conversions over the Pentecost weekend of 1738.
During the next six months they preached the gospel
of the new birth almost daily in Anglican churches
in the London area. Their insistence on the need
of personal conversion and that converts could
know their sins forgiven by the inner witness
of the Holy Spirit, resulted in the churches being
closed to them. It was then, with the support
and example of another fervent Anglican preacher,
George Whitefield, that their open-air preaching
began. For fifty-one and a half years, John Wesley
rode the highways and byways of England, Ireland,
Scotland and Wales, preaching the gospel on more
than 45,00 occasions! It has been estimated that
he travelled, mostly on horseback, more than one
third of a million miles, travelling and preaching,
in all weathers. When he died in 1791 he left
behind him more than 100,000 ‘Methodist’
converts in his Societies in Britain and America.
Well, that’s
John Wesley’s life and ministry summarised
in 300 words! In these cameos we will be looking
at events and happenings of that amazing ministry,
beginning now with his hometown, Epworth. Like
most of us, John Wesley loved the place where
he was born and across his fifty years of itinerant
ministry, he managed to get back to Epworth almost
every year and nearly always on his birthday!
In his final years he reminisced about what he
called ‘the little country town which I
still love beyond most places in the world.’
On his 82nd birthday he wrote in his famous Journal,
at Epworth. ‘I find myself just as strong
to labour as I was forty years ago. I do not impute
this to second causes but to the Sovereign Lord
of all.’ Four years later he wrote in Epworth.
‘What cause have I to praise God, as for
a thousand spiritual blessings, as for bodily
blessings also.’ And he was there again
in 1790, spending his last birthday, as he had
spent his first, in his beloved Epworth. Eighty-seven
years earlier he had been born in the rectory,
and that home had given him both a classical education
and the foundations of his Christian faith. Although
he did not know it then the world was to be his
parish. The Psalmist spoke of Zion (Jerusalem)
as being remembered because ‘this and that
man was born in her’ (Ps.87). And this Lincolnshire
town of Epworth has become immortalised in Church
History as the home of the Wesleys, and especially
because John and his brother Charles, arguably
England’s greatest evangelist and her greatest
hymn-writer, were both born there!
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2.
The Gospel of the Warmed Heart:
The Rev. John
Wesley (1703-91) began preaching in 1725, the
year of his ordination and he continued to be
a preacher for sixty-six years. In May 1738 something
very significant happened in his life that both
changed him dramatically and the direction of
his life. He had returned to England after spending
two frustrating years as a missionary to the American
Indians. On the homeward journey he had written
a kind of spiritual memorandum in which he spoke
of his disappointments and spiritual depression.
He had gone to Georgia to convert the heathen,
but, he asked, ‘who will convert me’?
He was a dedicated, orthodox, Bible-believing
churchman, yet something was missing in his life.
There was no joy, no sense of the presence of
God, no inner witness of the Spirit that his own
sins were forgiven. In London he met a young Moravian
missionary, Peter Bohler, who witnessed to him,
and his brother Charles, about personal saving
faith. Bohler wisely advised Wesley to continue
preaching according to the conviction and light
that God had already given him, assuring him that
God would soon answer his fears and doubts.
And Bohler was
right! On Wednesday evening, May 24th 1738, John
Wesley sat in a gathering of dedicated Christian
people meeting in Aldersgate Street in London.
The leader read from Martin Luther’s ‘Preface’
to his commentary on Romans. As he read Luther’s
words about how the Holy Spirit creates saving
faith in the heart, Wesley recorded. ‘I
felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust
in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation, and an
assurance was given me that He had taken away
my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law
of sin and death.’ A spiritual heart-warming
indeed! In his Journal, Wesley wrote the words
my, mine and me in italics to emphasise how personal
that great experience was. Ever since his ordination
Wesley had sought this personal assurance but
it alluded him for thirteen years. Now he knew
for sure that his sins were forgiven, that he
was reconciled to God and that the Spirit witnessed
with his spirit that he had eternal life.
That heart-warming
was the beginning of his life’s work as
an evangelist. In the next half-century, under
his itinerant ministry, thousands of people would
find the same experience of spiritual assurance
and peace with God. Three days prior to John’s
life-changing experience, on Pentecost Sunday,
May 21st 1738, his brother Charles Wesley had
found the same heart-warming transformation by
the Spirit. Exactly a year later Charles wrote
a hymn to express praise to God for what had happened
to his brother and himself on those memorable
days. He entitled it, ‘A Hymn for the Anniversary
Day of One’s Conversion,’ and it has
been a favourite with Christian people ever since.
O for a thousand
tongues to sing
My great Redeemer’s praise
The glories of my God and King
The triumphs of his grace.
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3.
The Devil Does Not Love Field-Preaching!
Most of us have
seen, perhaps even taken part in, open-air preaching
at some time. Such ministry is most frequently
seen in Britain in the summer in beach missions
and other holiday gatherings. In 18th century
England preaching in the open air was unknown
until George Whitefield and John and Charles Wesley
initiated it. John Wesley began this ministry
in Bristol in 1739 and he kept it up for more
than fifty years. If Wednesday May 24th 1738 marks
the date of his spiritual heart-warming, then
Monday 2nd April 1739 marks the beginning of what
he always called ‘field preaching.’
At four in the afternoon that day he stood up
in a brickyard in Bristol and preached to about
three thousand people from the words of Luke 4:18,
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because
he has anointed me to preach…’ What
a prophetic text it was! Fifty one and a half
years later, under an ash tree in Winchelsea in
Sussex, at the age of 87, John Wesley preached
his last open-air sermon, from Mk 1:15, ‘Repent
and believe the gospel.’ In between the
brickyard and the ash tree lay half a century
of ‘field preaching,’ a ministry unequalled
by any other Christian preacher. It is estimated
that eighty-five percent of the forty-five thousand
sermons preached by John Wesley were preached
out of doors. In all places, in all weathers,
to crowds large and small, he heralded the Good
News across the four kingdoms of Great Britain
for half a century. He preached in fields, in
barns, on hillsides, at market crosses, in town
and city streets and at pit heads from Durham
to Cornwall. All over the country you can still
find scores of local markers with the information,
‘John Wesley preached here.’
Wesley began
this field-preaching, and continued it, because
he proved it was the most effective way to reach
the people with the gospel. He believed himself
called of God to this demanding ministry and he
gave himself to it with undivided zeal and dedication.
On almost any day during these fifty years, Wesley
would travel twenty or thirty miles on horseback,
in all weathers, and preach at least twice out
of doors. In one of his Journal entries for June
1759, he wrote of why he practised field preaching.
‘I preached abroad to twice the people we
should have had at the house (i.e. the preaching
house). What marvel the devil does not love field-preaching!
Neither do I. I love a commodious room, a soft
cushion, a handsome pulpit. But where is my zeal
if I do not trample all these underfoot in order
to save one more soul?’ Field-preaching
worked! On this occasion twice as many heard the
gospel as would have done if Wesley had preached
indoors. As Paul said of his ministry, ‘I
have become all things to all men that I might
by all means save some’ (1 Cor.9:22). As
twenty-first century Christians, we, too, must
seek to reach our generation with the gospel ‘by
all means.’
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4.
Two Silver Spoons:
Probably the
most misquoted text in the whole Bible is 1 Tim.
6:10, which is often repeated as, ‘Money
is the root of all evil’. The full text
is, ‘The love of money is the root of all
(i.e. all kinds) evil.’ In that respect
John Wesley was clearly saved by grace from any
love of money. In the half-century of his evangelistic
ministry, he earned thousands of pounds from his
publishing enterprises. With his brother Charles,
he published no fewer than four hundred titles,
including letters, journals, sermons, theological
treatises, Christian apologetics, biblical commentaries,
and much, much else. And he quite literally gave
all the money away to poor people and good causes!
Early in the revival he wrote: ‘If I leave
behind me ten pounds, above my debts and my books,
you and all mankind bear witness against me that
I lived and died a thief and a robber.’
At his death in 1791, his executors found that
his total treasury amounted to ten guineas (£10.5
pounds)! And his will directed that four of these
guineas should pay four unemployed men to carry
his coffin and the remainder to be distributed
among his poorest preachers.
In one of his
sermons he outlined the stewardship of money that
he practised all his life. At Oxford he received
thirty pounds a year, lived on twenty-eight pounds
and gave away two pounds. The next year he received
sixty pounds, still lived on twenty-eight and
had thirty-two to give away. Years later when
he received one hundred and twenty pounds, he
continued to live on twenty eight pounds and was
able to give ninety-two pounds to the poor! He
once confided in his sister Martha: ‘Money
never stays with me. It would burn me if it did.
I throw it out of my hands as soon as possible,
lest it should find a way into my heart.' He gave
generously to the poor wherever he met them and
was so kind to beggars that his brother Charles
once remarked, ‘My brother was born for
the benefit of knaves.’
In 1776 the Commissioners
for Excise were doing an inventory of all the
silver plate held privately in England. They were
sure that John Wesley, who had thousands of converts
all over the country, must have become rich through
all these supporters. They wrote and asked him
to declare what quantity of silver plate he owned.
His reply was as succinct as it was simple. ‘I
have two silver spoons at London, and two at Bristol.
This is all the plate which I have at present,
and I shall not buy any more while so many around
me want bread.’ John Wesley really believed
and practised the counsel of Jesus. ‘A man’s
life does not consist in the abundance of his
possessions’ (Lk.12:15). At the end of his
long and devoted life, John Wesley left behind
him just ten guineas – and one hundred thousand
converts!
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5.
John Wesley and the Means of Grace:
John Wesley was
no ‘hit and run’ evangelist. In his
half-century of itinerant preaching in Britain,
he took the most meticulous care in the ‘follow
up’ work. All those who professed saving
faith were taught and encouraged to share in the
means of grace daily, weekly and on other occasions.
He wrote: ‘I determine, by the grace of
God, not to strike one stroke in any place where
I cannot follow the blow.’ He was convinced
that when believers are brought to saving faith
in Jesus Christ, this is just the beginning of
their pilgrimage. And there were two main sources
of the means of grace that John Wesley strongly
impressed on all his followers. The first was
the Sunday service in the local parish church.
John Wesley was born into the Church of England
and died an ordained minister in that Church.
In his lifetime he used all his influence to ensure
that his ‘Methodist’ people were regular
communicants in their parish churches. He set
a personal example of this kind of devotion. When
he was charged with attempting to set up a new
denomination, he flatly denied it. ‘I dare
not renounce communion with the Church of England.
As a Minister, I teach her doctrines; I use her
offices; I conform to her rubrics.’
Wesley was a
lifelong admirer of the Book of Common Prayer,
the Liturgy and the Homilies of the Church of
England. He wanted all his people to be regular
in their Church attendance, that they might hear
and profit from the Liturgy with its use of Scriptures,
confession, prayers and collects. All of these
are means of grace by which the people of God
are built up in their holy faith. Even where the
minister was ‘unawakened’ and often
hostile to the revival, Wesley still urged his
people to attend the services. He assured them
that they would benefit spiritually from hearing
the Liturgy read and, especially, partaking in
Holy Communion. To that end he instructed his
preachers and leaders to make sure that ‘Methodist’
meeting times did not clash with Church of England
services.
As well as advocating
regular attendance at the parish church, John
Wesley provided additional means of grace for
his people. In this way the Methodist ‘Class
Meeting’ was begun. It was made up of eleven
people and a leader who met weekly for Bible teaching,
testimony, worship and collecting money for the
poor. The ‘Band Meeting’ was made
up of five or six people who were more spiritually
advanced and their weekly meeting gave a large
place to confession of personal sin and failure
and very open and frank discussion. The ‘Love
Feast’ was an occasional meeting for singing,
testimony and fellowship together in sharing a
simple meal of bread and water. There were also
Quarterly Meetings, Watch night Services and Covenant
Services. All these Methodist institutions were
for the purpose of helping people to ‘grow
in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ’ (2 Peter 3:18). Just
as surely as John Wesley believed in preaching
the gospel to bring sinners to saving faith in
Christ, he believed just as passionately in encouraging
believers to partake of the means of grace. The
Christian life, he taught, is not just the experience
of a moment of conversion; it is also the spiritual
pilgrimage of a lifetime.
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6.
The Prayer of Faith:
John Wesley made
twenty-one preaching visits to Ireland between
1747 and 1789. From the first visit, he was warmly
welcomed in the country and the response to his
gospel preaching and evangelism was very encouraging.
When some of his London friends chided him and
his brother Charles for crossing the Irish Sea
so often, his reply was, ‘Have patience
and Ireland will repay you.’ And Wesley
was right, for not only were there thousands of
people in the Irish Methodist Societies at Wesley’s
death, but, in addition, scores of Irish converts
joined the ranks of Wesley’s travelling
preachers. Among the Irish converts was a young
woman, Henrietta Jones, a noted socialite. In
1758 she married Edward Gayer, Clerk of the Irish
House of Lords and her new home was the beautiful
Gayer mansion house at Derryaghy, a few miles
from Lisburn in Co Antrim. Mrs Gayer’s part
in one of the crises in John Wesley’s life
is a story worth telling.
Some years after
her marriage, Mrs Gayer became very concerned
about personal salvation. In her spiritual search
she met a regimental surgeon who was a Methodist
and he directed her to ‘the old, old story
of Jesus and his love.’ Having found saving
faith and assurance, Mrs Gayer joined the local
Methodist Society and was a loyal and devoted
member until her death. She met John Wesley in
1773 and invited him to her home to meet her husband
and from then on he was a regular visitor.
On his fifteenth
visit to Ireland in June 1775, Wesley was taken
seriously ill at Tanderagee. He had been in a
high fever for some time, but now, in his own
words, ‘my understanding was quite confused
and my strength entirely gone.’ In that
condition he was taken to the Gayer home where
Mrs Gayer, and her daughter, now also a Methodist
convert, nursed their patient. Wesley was seventy-two
years old and the prognosis was not good. For
three days he was, as he later recorded, ‘more
dead than alive.’ Word spread quickly that
Methodism’s Founder was dying and indeed
one English newspaper, misinterpreting the news
from Lisburn, announced his death. Charles Wesley,
hearing the news of his brother’s serious
illness in London, wrote of how the English Methodists
were ‘swallowed up in sorrow.’ Friends
gathered to Derryaghy from far and near to pray
that God would spare His servant for more years
of travel and preaching. During a season of prayer,
one of the preachers felt led to pray that as
God had spared the life of King Hezekiah (Isaiah
38:1-6), He would likewise spare the life of John
Wesley. This request for fifteen years to be added
to Wesley’s life stirred the faith of the
praying group and they cried to the Lord for its
fulfilment. As they fervently prayed, suddenly
Mrs Gayer rose from her knees and announced, ‘The
prayer is granted!’ Wesley’s health
began to improve rapidly and less than a week
later he was back on his travels. The crises had
occurred in late June 1775 and John Wesley lived
until March 1791, a period of fifteen years and
eight months. The prayer of faith prayed by Mrs
Gayer and the other Methodists, asking for fifteen
years to be added to John Wesley’s life,
had been wonderfully answered.
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7.
My Sons in the Gospel:
In the 18th
century Evangelical Revival, the names of John
Wesley, George Whitefield and Charles Wesley were
prominent. These preachers travelled across the
country, preaching mostly out-of-doors and attracted
large crowds of listeners. In the last two centuries,
many biographers, historians and theologians have
reminded us of the importance of these preachers.
In the days of the Revival, England’s parish
clergy mostly ignored George Whitefield and the
Wesley brothers but there were some notable exceptions.
Ministers in the Church of England like George
Walker in Truro, David Simpson in Macclesfield,
John Fletcher in Madeley, William Grimshaw in
Haworth, Henry Crook in Leeds and John Berridge
in Everton (Notts.), warmly welcomed the ‘Methodist’
evangelists into their pulpits. Their support
for the revival meant that often they were branded
‘Methodists’ themselves. In addition,
however, to these clerical supporters, John Wesley
had other helpers, some three hundred of them.
These were his itinerant preachers, devoted laymen
who served as Wesley’s lieutenants in circuits
all over the British Isles. Many of them were
converts of the Wesleys’ preaching and John
Wesley selected them as full-time itinerants because
of their devotion, their passion for evangelism
and their willingness to serve under Wesley’s
directions. He called these good men his ‘sons
in the gospel’ and they served in God’s
work with great dedication and often at great
sacrifice. Many of them had to leave home for
months on end as they were appointed to circuits
all over the country and there were no resources
for married preachers to take their wives and
children with them. They were given a horse and
saddlebags and little else.
One of the most
remarkable of these itinerant preachers was John
Nelson, a stonemason from Birstall in Yorkshire.
Having gone to London in search of work he was
attracted one day to a large gathering of people.
Going nearer he discovered that it was a religious
meeting and as he listened to John Wesley, without
knowing who he was, he came under deep conviction
of sin. Nelson felt that Wesley’s whole
sermon was directed at him and he recorded, ‘This
man can tell the secrets of my heart, he hath
not left me there, for he hath showed me the remedy,
even the blood of Jesus.’ Following his
conversion, Nelson felt called of God to begin
to witness to his friends about their salvation.
He returned to Birstall and many of his neighbours
were converted through his ministry. The stonemason
had become a Kingdom builder! He invited John
Wesley to Yorkshire who was amazed when he saw
the effects of Nelson’s preaching. ‘The
whole town wore a new face. Such a change did
God work by the artless testimony of one plain
man.’ Nelson joined the ranks of Wesley’s
‘sons in the gospel’ and gave the
rest of his life to itinerant evangelism. It was
Nelson who made contact with Digory and Elizabeth
Isbell in Trewint, Cornwall, and that contact
led to their conversion. He was stationed in Ireland
and in every circuit his ministry resulted in
conversions. John Nelson was a shining example
of how the Lord can use lay ministry to His glory
as well as that of the ordained clergy.
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8.
On His Father’s Tombstone
John Wesley made
his first preaching visit to his home town, Epworth
in Lincolnshire, in June 1742. He had not been
there for seven years, since the time of his father’s
funeral. Because he was an ordained minister in
the Church of England and because his father had
been Rector in Epworth for forty years, he asked
the Curate if he might assist him on the Sunday
morning, either in reading prayers or preaching.
But the Curate, knowing of Wesley’s itinerant
ministry, had no intention of having a ‘rebel’
preacher in his pulpit. Following the service,
Wesley’s travelling assistant, John Taylor,
stood at the church gate and announced: ‘Mr
Wesley, not being permitted to preach in the church,
designs to preach here at six o’clock.’
The news spread like wildfire! ‘Old parson
Wesley’s son be back and he be preaching
in the churchyard!’ The whole area was packed
with people as the be-gowned Oxford don and open-air
revivalist took his stand on his father’s
flat tombstone. While the church authorities could
forbid John Wesley from preaching in the pulpit
or the graveyard, they could not prevent his standing
on his father’s grave, for it was Wesley
family property.
What a scene
it must have been! Merchant and miller, farmer
and fisherman, soldier and smithy, weaver and
washerwoman – all were there in that large,
gaping crowd. How many of them remembered the
preacher as a small, pensive child taking his
place every Sunday in the family pew? Were there
some among them who remembered the rectory fire
thirty-three years before – perhaps even
those two brave, unknown men, who rescued England’s
future evangelist from the flames? Now John Wesley
stood on his father’s tomb on that Sunday,
June 6th, 1742, and as the evening shadows began
to fall across the 13th century St Andrew’s
Church, he proclaimed his text. ‘The kingdom
of God is… righteousness and peace and joy
in the Holy Ghost’ (Rom. 14:17).
John Wesley stayed
for a week on that first visit home to Epworth.
Every morning he preached at the town cross and
every evening from his father’s tomb. He
visited many homes in the parish where he had
been his father’s curate and scores of men
and women came to faith in Christ as a result
of that visit, and the many more visits he made
to Epworth in the coming years. Later he reflected
on his earlier curacy and his present itinerant
ministry, and wrote. ‘I am well assured
that I did more good to my parishioners in Lincolnshire
by preaching three days on my father's tomb than
I did by preaching three years in his pulpit.’
John Wesley certainly didn’t despise parish
ministry but he had learned that preaching out-of-doors
reached many people who did not attend church
services.
And so, in this
John Wesley tercentenary year, all Christians,
and especially those of us who live in Britain,
have reason to thank God for His servant, John
Wesley. From Epworth in Lincolnshire, there arose
a river of grace in 18th century England that,
like Ezekiel’s, flowed out to bless and
heal the land. Or, to change the metaphor, at
Epworth was the first kindling of that holy conflagration
that would soon, in the words of Charles Wesley,
‘Set the kingdoms on a blaze.’
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9.
Charles Wesley: The First Methodist:
While this tercentenary
year of John Wesley’s birth has many events
to celebrate that occasion, the great contribution
of his brother Charles to the Church must not
be forgotten. There is probably not another example
in the whole of Church History of two brothers
working together so closely in the service of
the Lord as that of John and Charles Wesley. Scattered
throughout John’s writings there are many
friendly references to ‘my brother and I,’
as John recognised the consecrated talents and
gifts of his younger brother. Charles (1707-1788),
also a product of that amazing Epworth rectory
home, studied at Westminster School and then,
like John, at Christ Church, Oxford. He was the
founder of the group derisively named the ‘Holy
Club’ and later ‘Methodists,’
so, strictly speaking, Charles Wesley was the
founder of Methodism, not John. He accompanied
John to Georgia in America and later, on Pentecost
Sunday, May 21st 1738, found the ‘warmed-heart’
experience three days before John did.
Christians everywhere
know of Charles Wesley as a hymn-writer and his
output was immense. Beginning in the week of his
evangelical conversion, he wrote hymns for the
next fifty years; a total of 8500. That makes
him the most prolific of all the English poets;
in terms of the number of lines, he wrote more
than Shakespeare or Milton or Browning, Keats
or Tennyson. The lasting popularity of his hymns
has often eclipsed his great ministry as an itinerant
preacher. In the sixteen years from 1739 to around
1755, he travelled as many miles on horseback,
faced as many mobs, preached as many sermons and
witnessed as many conversions as his brother John
did. He was the first Methodist preacher in Cornwall
and he had a most fruitful ministry in his visits
to Ireland. In terms of his heritage in this twenty-first
century, in many ways it is more alive today than
that of his brother John. On any given Sunday
this year, while a few dedicated people here and
there will read one of John’s sermon, or
something else he wrote, literally thousands of
Christians around the world will sing Charles’
hymns!
These hymns have
become an integral part of Christian worship and
praise wherever the English language is spoken,
and indeed in many translations as well, for two
centuries. We can hardly imagine Christmas praise
without, ‘Hark, the herald angels sing,’
or, ‘Come, thou long-expected Jesus;’
or Good Friday without, ‘O Love divine,
what hast Thou done?’ or, ‘All ye
that pass by.’ Easter Sunday celebration
needs, ‘Christ the Lord is risen today,’
just as Ascension Day thanksgiving invariably
employs, ‘Hail the day that sees him rise.’
When it comes to the doctrine of Christ’s
Second Coming how well Charles expressed it with
his, ‘Lo, He comes, with clouds descending.’
In terms of worship and praise all the year round,
Charles’ ‘And can it be?’, ‘O
for a thousand tongues,’ and ‘Jesus,
lover of my soul,’ are among the most popular
hymns in the language. And the list of truly great
hymns from the pen of Charles Wesley goes on and
on. He was not only the ‘sweet singer of
Methodism;’ he was the Orpheus of the whole
Church. All of us have our favourites from Charles’
amazing output, but believers everywhere can unite
to sing with him those moving words that express
Christian aspiration so perfectly.
O Thou who
camest from above
The pure, celestial fire to impart
Kindle a flame of sacred love
On the mean altar of my heart.
Ready for all Thy perfect will
My acts of faith and love repeat
Till death Thy endless mercies seal
And make the sacrifice complete.
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10.
John Wesley: All the Trumpets Sounded for Him:
John Wesley is
often quoted as saying, ‘Our people die
well,’ and so it is fitting that this final
look at Wesley and his work should be a summary
of how he ended his earthly pilgrimage. In November
1753, thinking he was dying, he wrote his own
epitaph and described himself as ‘a brand
plucked from the burning,’ (Zechariah 3:2)
a reference both to his dramatic escape from the
fire that destroyed his rectory home in 1709,
and his escape, through grace, from the fires
of damnation. Then in 1783 he was struck down
with a serious illness in Bristol and his friends
were certain he would not recover. Wesley himself
thought likewise and said to Joseph Bradford,
his travelling companion, ‘I have been reflecting
on my past life. I have been wandering up and
down between fifty and sixty years, endeavouring
in my poor way to do a little good to my fellow
creatures. Now it is probable that there but a
few steps between me and death, and what have
I to trust to for salvation? I can see nothing
which I have done or suffered that will bear looking
at. I have no other plea than this:
I the chief
of sinners am
But Jesus died for me.
But his life
was spared for another eight years. On Thursday
October 7th, 1790, at the age of eighty-seven,
he preached his last open-air sermon under an
ash tree in Winchelsea in Sussex. Four months
later he preached his very last sermon at Leatherhead
in Surrey and chose for his text, ‘Seek
the Lord while He may be found’ (Is. 55:6).
It marked the end of a remarkable ministry, one
unparalleled in the history of the Church. Fifty
three years earlier his heart had been ‘strangely
warmed’ in the meeting in Aldersgate Street
in London and from that place, his Spirit-anointed
ministry had not ceased for more than half a century.
On horseback he travelled the roads of Great Britain,
covering about a third of a million miles. He
had preached more than forty-five thousand times
and his ‘Methodist’ people, in Britain
and America, numbered one hundred thousand. He
was supported by three hundred full-time travelling
preachers. With his brother Charles he had written,
edited and published four hundred titles including
biblical commentaries, letters, sermons, theological
treatises, and much else for the edification and
of his people. In the final decade of his life
he had become one of best-known men in England
and received more invitations to preach than he
could possibly accept. Then, in his house in City
Road, London, on Sunday, February 26th 1791, he
began to enter ‘the valley of the shadow
of death.’ When his friends, knowing his
end was near, prayed with him, he replied with
a hearty ‘Amen.’ Then he said to them:
‘There is no need for more than what I said
at Bristol, “I the chief of sinners am,
But Jesus died for me.’” Later he
said to those gathered round his bed, ‘The
best of all is, God is with us.’ Two days
later, as he attempted to repeat the words of
Isaac Watts’ hymn, ‘I’ll praise
my Maker while I’ve breath,’ his spirit
crossed the river, and in Bunyan’s immortal
words, ‘all the trumpets sounded for him
on the other side.’ In death, as in life,
John Wesley proved that saving faith in Christ
as Saviour and Lord is the guarantee, the only
guarantee, of life eternal.
Revd Dr Herbert
McGonigle
Principal and Senior Lecturer in Historical Theology
and Wesley Studies
Nazarene Theological College
Manchester
England
HMcGonigle@nazarene.ac.uk
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