Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great | Page 9

in the Church of England had attempted so undignified a thing.
Wesley was doing what his mother had done the very year he was born. She had preached to the people of the village of Epworth in the churchyard, because, forsooth, the chancel was a sacred place and would suffer if any one but a man, duly anointed, spoke there. The woman had a message and did the only thing she could: spoke outside, and spoke to two hundred fifty people, while the regular attendance to hear her husband was twenty-five.
And so John Wesley had made a discovery, and that was that to reach the submerged three-quarters, you must make your appeal to them on the street, in the marketplaces--from church-steps. His experience on shipboard and in America had done him good. They had taught him that form and ritual, set time and place, were things not necessary-that whenever two or three were gathered together in His name, He was in their midst.
And it was in preaching to the outcasts that Wesley found himself, and was "converted." He says, "My work in America failed because I had not then given my heart to my Savior."
Now he got the "power," and whether this word means to his followers what it meant to him is a question we need not analyze. Power comes by abandonment: the orator who flings convention to the winds and gives himself to the theme finds power.
The opposition and the ridicule were all very necessary factors in allowing Wesley to find his true self.
He wrote to his mother telling what he was doing, and she wrote back giving him her blessing, writing words of encouragement. "Son John must speak the words of love on any and every occasion when the spirit moves," she said.
John Wesley was attracting too much attention to himself at Oxford: there came words of warning from those in authority. To these admonitions he replied that he was a duly ordained clergyman of the Church of England, and there was nothing in the canons that forbade his holding services when and where he desired. And then he adds: "To show simple men and women the way of life, and tell them of Him who died that we might live, surely can not be regarded as an offense. I must continue in my course." That settled it--Oxford the cultured was not for him. He was a preacher without a pulpit--a teacher without a school.
He saddled his horse and with all his earthly possessions in his saddlebags traveled toward London--following that storied road which almost every great and powerful man of England had traversed. He was penniless, but he owned his horse. He was a horse-lover: he delighted in the companionship of a horse, and where the way was rough he would walk and lead the patient animal. It comes to us with a slight shock that the Reverend John Wesley anticipated Colonel Budd Doble by saying, "God's best gift to man--a horse!"
So John Wesley rode, not knowing where he was going or why--only that Oxford no longer needed him. When he started he was depressed, but after passing the confines of the town, and once out upon the highway with the green fields on either side, he lifted up his voice and sang one of his brother's hymns. Exile from Oxford meant liberty.
Arriving at a village he would stand on the church-steps, on a street- corner, often from a tavern-veranda, and speak. In his saddlebags he carried his black robe and white tippet. He could put these on over his travel-stained clothes and look presentable. His hair was worn long and parted in the middle; his face was cleanly shaved, and revealed comely features of remarkable strength.
The man was a commanding figure. People felt the honesty of his presence. The crowd might cat-call, and jeer, but those who stood near offered no violence. Indeed, more than once the roughs protected him. He preached of righteousness and judgment to come. He pleaded for a better life--here and now. And so he traveled, preaching three or four times a day, and riding from twenty to fifty miles. At London he preached on the "heaths," and thousands upon thousands who never entered a church heard him. That phrase, "They came to scoff and remained to pray," is his.
Wesley's oratory was not what is known to us as "the Methodist style." He was quiet, moderate, conversational, but so earnest that his words carried conviction. The man was honest--he wanted nothing--he gave himself.
Such a man today, preaching in the same way, would command marked attention and achieve success. The impassioned preaching of Whitefield was what gave the "Methodist color." Charles Wesley was much like Whitefield, and was regarded as a greater preacher than his brother because he indulged in more gymnastics--but John