Experiences of the Oxford Methodist.

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ridicule, but their fame had spread as far as Bristol before Whitefield left his home. He had "loved them," he tells us, before he entered the university. He longed to be acquainted with them, and often watched them passing through the sneering crowds, to receive the sacrament at St. Mary's; but he was a poor youth, the servitor of other students, and shrunk from obtruding himself upon their notice. At length a woman, in one of the workhouses, attempted to cut her throat; and Whitefield, knowing that both the Wesleys were ready for every good work, sent a poor aged apple-woman to inform Mr. Charles Wesley of it, charging her not to discover who sent her. She went, but contrary to orders told his name, and this led Charles to invite him to breakfast next morning. He was now introduced to the rest of the Methodists, and he also, like them,." began to live by rule, and pick up the very fragments of his time, that not a moment might be lost." Being in great distress about his soul, he lay whole days prostrate on the ground, in silent or vocal prayer; he chose the worst sort of food; he fasted twice a week; he wore woolen gloves, a patched gown, and dirty shoes; and, as a penitent, thought it unbecoming to have his hair powdered.

This neglect of his person lost him patronage and cut off some of his pay. Charles Wesley lent him a book, "The Life of God in the Soul of Man;" and he says:

Though I had fasted, watched, and prayed, and received the sacrament so long, yet I never knew what true religion was, till God sent me that excellent treatise by the hands of my never-to-be-forgotten friend. In reading that "true religion was a union of the soul with God, and Christ formed within us," a ray of divine light was instantaneously darted in upon my soul; and from that moment, but not till then, did I know that I must be a new creature. The first thing I was called to give up for God was what the world calls my fair reputation. I had no sooner received the sacrament publicly on a week-day, at St. Mary's, but I was set up as a mark for all the polite students that knew me to shoot at. By this they knew that I was commenced Methodist. Mr. Charles Wesley walked with me, in order to confirm me, from the church even to the college. I confess, to my shame, I would gladly have excused him; and the next day, going to his room, one of our fellows passing by, I was ashamed to be seen to knock at his door. But, blessed be God, the fear of man gradually wore off. As I had imitated Nicodemus in his coward ice, so, by the divine assistance, I followed him in his courage. I confessed the Methodists more and more publicly every day. I walked openly with them, and chose rather to bear contempt with those people of God than to enjoy the applause of almost-Christians for a season.

It may be inferred, but might as well be stated on the testimony of John Wesley, that it was the practice of the Oxford

Methodists to give away each year all they had after providing for their own necessities; and then, as an illustration, he adds, in reference to himself: "One of them had thirty pounds a year. He lived on twenty-eight, and gave away forty shillings. The next year, receiving sixty pounds, he still lived on twenty-eight, and gave away thirty-two. The third year he received ninety pounds, and gave away sixty-two. The fourth year he received a hundred and twenty pounds; still he lived as before on twentyeight, and gave to the poor all the rest." Such was the typical Oxford Methodist.

He maintained the doctrine of apostolical succession, and believed no one had authority to administer the sacraments who was not episcopally ordained. He religiously observed saint-days and holidays, and excluded Dissenters from the holy communion, on the ground that they had not been properly baptized. He observed ecclesiastical discipline to the minutest points, and was scrupulously strict in practicing rubrics and canons.

In fasting, in mortification, in alms-giving, in well-doing, and by keeping the whole law, he sought purity of heart and peaco of conscience. He was intensely earnest, sincere, and self-denying. In all this, while a prodigy of piety in the eyes of man, there was a felt want of harmony with God, and a feebleness amounting to impotency, in the propagation of his faith among men. Like one of old, he could say: "I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I mote." Sacramentarian, ritualist, legalist: "What lack I yet?"

CHAPTER V.

Breaking up of the Epworth Family-Death and Widowhood-The Parents The Daughters and their History.

THE

HE year 1735 witnessed the breaking up of the two families in which Methodism was born and nursed- one at Epworth and the other at Oxford. After a faithful ministry of forty-seven years, Samuel Wesley died in April. He had been manifestly ripening for his change, and in his last moments had the consolation of the presence of his two sons, John and Charles. From both of them we have accounts of the death-bed scene.

Charles, writing a long letter two days after the funeral to his brother Samuel, says: "You have reason to envy us, who could attend him in the last stage of his illness. The few words he could utter I saved, and hope never to forget. Some of them were: 'Nothing too much to suffer for heaven. The weaker I am in body, the stronger and more sensible support I feel from God. There is but a step between me and death.' The fear of death he had entirely conquered, and at last gave up his latest human desires of finishing Job, paying his debts, and seeing you. He often laid his hand upon my head and said: 'Be steady. The Christian faith will surely revive in this kingdom; you shall see it, though I shall not.' To my sister Emily, he said: 'Do not be concerned at my death; God will then begin to manifest himself to my family.' On my asking him whether he did not find himself worse, he replied: 'O my Charles, I feel a great deal; God chastens me with strong pain, but I praise him for it, I thank him for it, I love him for it!' On the 25th his voice failed him, and nature seemed entirely spent, when, on my brother's asking whether he was not near heaven, he answered distinctly, and with the most of hope and triumph that could be expressed in sounds, 'Yes, I am.' He spoke once more, just after my brother had used the commendatory prayer; his last words were, 'Now you have done all!""

John Wesley, in his sermon on Love, preached at Savannah (1736), adverts to his father's death: "When asked, not long before his release, 'Are the consolations of God small with you?' he replied aloud, 'No, no, no!' and then calling all that were

near him by their names, he said: "Think of heaven, talk of heaven; all the time is lost when we are not thinking of heaven.""

In his controversy with Archbishop Secker (1748), on the doctrine of the witness of the Spirit, he cites personal experience:

My father did not die unacquainted with the faith of the gospel, of the primitive Christians, or of our first Reformers; the same which, by the grace of God, I preach, and which is just as new as Christianity. What he experienced before I know not; but I know that, during his last illness, which continued eight months, he enjoyed a clear sense of his acceptance with God. I heard him express it more than once, although, at that time, I understood him not. "The inward witness, son, the inward witness," said he to me, "that is the proof, the strongest proof of Christianity." And when I asked him (the time of his change drawing nigh), "Sir, are you in much pain?" he answered aloud with a smile: "God does chasten me with pain―yca, all my bones with strong pain; but I thank him for all, I bless him for all, I love him for all!" I think the last words he spoke, when I had just commended his soul to God, were, "Now you have done all!” and, with the same serene, cheerful countenance, he fell asleep without one struggle, or sigh, or groan. I cannot therefore doubt but the Spirit of God bore an inward witness with his spirit that he was a child of God.

In the long sickness that preceded death the good old rector had occasion to acknowledge the kindness of his people. He outlived the brutal hostility with which he was met during the first years of his residence at Epworth, and his dozen communicants had increased to above a hundred. One of his sayings was, "The Lord will give me at the last all my children, to meet in heaven." To him belongs the distinction of being "the father of the greatest evangelist of modern times, and of the best sacred poet that has flourished during the Christian era." That the three sons of Epworth parsonage became polished shafts is largely due to the scholarly inspiration and care of their father. He had, under great difficulties, obtained a university education himself, and could not be content with a less heritage for them.

Samuel Wesley was buried in his church-yard; and upon the tombstone his widow had these words inscribed as part of the epitaph: "As he lived so he died, in the true catholic faith of the Holy Trinity in Unity, and that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, and the only Saviour of mankind."

Methodism owes a debt to endowed scholarships, fellowships, and institutions of learning. Without them, Samuel Wesley and his sons, with George Whitefield, must have gone without the educational outfit which, under God, so mightily prepared them for their life-work. John was maintained six years at Char

Death of Mrs. Wesley.

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terhouse, and thence sent forward to Oxford upon this founda.. tion. As fellow of Lincoln College, he matured and enlarged his post-graduate attainments, and upon this income initiated Methodism before it was organized so as to support its ministry. In the same way Charles, after becoming a "king's scholar," at Westminster, went through that fine training-school, and afterward graduated at the university. The income of Epworth was utterly unable to bear these charges. The arrangement that made it possible for the elder Wesley and for George Whitefield to get through as "servitors" is part of the same wisdom that lays a "foundation" to bless the ages. Let one think, if he can, of Methodism without these four men; and think of these four men without education.

Those dying-words to his children, "The Christian faith will surely revive in this kingdom; you shall see it, though I shall not," were prophetic. Seven years afterward, John stood on that tombstone and preached the gospel to great and awakened multitudes, "with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven."

A veil is drawn over the parting from old Epworth. Neither of the sons could be prevailed on to succeed their father in the rectory, and so the connection of the family with the spot endeared by associations extending over forty years comes to an end. Beautiful in sorrow, and with the weight of years added to her solitary condition, the mother leaves the memorable place to spend the seven years of her earthly pilgrimage as a widow in about equal portions with four of her children, Emilia, Samuel at Tiverton, Martha, and John in London. In the last change she gathered her five living daughters around her at the Foundry, and, not far from where she commenced, there in peaceful quiet she closed the journey of life, after a glorious but suffering career of seventy-three years. They stood round the bed, and fulfilled her last request, uttered a little before she lost her speech: "Children, as soon as I am released, sing a psalm of praise to God." Released was her beautiful thought of death.*

* Dr. Adam Clarke, in summing up the incidents of her life, says: "I have been acquainted with many pious females; I have read the lives of others; but such a woman, take her for all in all, I have not heard of, I have not read of, nor with her equal have I been acquainted. Such a one Solomon has described at the en of his Proverbs; and adapting his words I can say, 'Many daughters have done virtuously, but SUSANNA WESLEY has excelled them all.'"