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THE

CHRISTIAN EXAMINER

AND

RELIGIOUS MISCELLANY.

JULY, 1847.

ART. I.- JOHN WESLEY.*

THE eighteenth century, rife as it was in doubters and deniers, had its hearts of faith and tongues of fire. The assailants of Christianity were, indeed, more than met by its intellectual champions. In point of scholarship, science, and philosophy, faith bore the palm in the desperate struggle. Gibbon wrought no harm to Lardner, nor Volney to Priestley. Butler, and Kant, and Reid tower above Hume, and Diderot, and Condillac. If we speak of theorists of nature, how small and contemptible seems the system of D'Holbach by the side of that of Swedenborg! Who compares Helvetius with Cuvier ?

But there is one thing more rare, as well as more power

*1. The Life of Wesley; and Rise and Progress of Methodism. By RoвERT SOUTHEY, Esq., LL. D. Third Edition. With Notes by the late SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, ESQ., and Remarks on the Life and Character of John Wesley, by the late ALEXANDER KNOX, Esq. Edited by the REV. CHARLES CUTHBERT SOUTHEY, A. M. London. 1846. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 1058.

2. The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, M. A., sometime Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. Collected from his Private Papers and Printed Works; and written at the Request of his Executors. To which is prefixed some Account of his Ancestors and Relations; with the Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley, M. A., collected from his Private Journal, and never before published. The whole forming a History of Methodism, in which the Principles and Economy the Methodists are unfolded. By JOHN WHITEHEAD, M. D. Boston: McLeish. 1844. 2 vols. 8vo pp. 308 and 313.

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3. The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, A. M., sometime Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, and Founder of the Methodist Societies. By RICHARD WATSON. New York. 1831.

VOL. XLIII.

- 4TH S. VOL. VIII. NO. I.

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ful, in a period of doubt and disputation, than scholarship, or science, or philosophy. Apologetic literature, so characteristic of the theologians of the last century, is at best barren in vital force or quickening energy. Earnest faith is the thing needed, faith whose words burn as well as enlighten. Such the eighteenth century had. The age of Rousseau and Voltaire was the age of Whitefield and Wesley.

Providence appears to keep up a pontificate of its own, very different from that in the gift of the Romish cardinals. Its holy unction dwells ever upon some consecrated head. If Fénelon bore it in his time, it is not difficult to point out his successor. From the death-bed of the Archbishop of Cambray, we look towards England for a person worthy of being named in connection with him. The date is 1715. Remembering that Europe was then entering upon that transition period of doubt and infidelity that has so marked the whole century, not forgetting, that at that time in Geneva, in Switzerland, there was a child of three years named John James Rousseau, and in Champagne, in France, another of two years named Denis Diderot, and that the young Arouet, afterwards called Voltaire, at the age of twenty-one was already astonishing the saloons of Paris, and alarming the court of Versailles, by his genius and satire, — we pass on, and, crossing the Straits of Dover, approach the cliffs of England, and look upon the land of our fathers at that interesting period. The revolutionary struggles of the nation had subsided. The belligerent parties and their descendants, both Puritan and Churchman, enjoyed the privileges of civil and religious liberty with comparatively small restriction. But with quiet times worldliness came. No longer provoked by persecution, nor startled by danger, the Established Church and the Dissenting sects had settled down into a comfortable indifference. Honorable exceptions, indeed, there were, exceptions among high names in literature, such as Bishop Wilson, Doddridge, and Watts;

exceptions, too, in quarters then indeed little noted, but since well known by their fruits, as in the case of the family in Epworth, Lincolnshire, which furnishes us with our present subject.

In that place, a market-town of some two thousand inhabitants, dwelt at the time of which we are speaking a good Christian minister, who had little sympathy with the general indifference. He had been for more than twenty years

1847.]

Family.

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pastor of the village, and united with the Episcopal principles which he had adopted much of the Puritan zeal in which he had been educated. His wife was of the same mind and religious lineage. She had so far departed from the usual etiquette of the Establishment as to conduct religious conferences in her parlour during her husband's absence, much to the horror of Mr. Inman, the starched-up curate. Such had been the good pastor's opposition to prevalent vices, that in 1709, when his house was burned to the ground, and his son John, then six years old, was saved from the flames almost by a miracle, the incendiaries were supposed to be persons who had been goaded to revenge by the closeness of the preaching.

At the time selected for the commencement of our sketch, the family appears to have consisted of eight members, the parents and six children. The eldest son, Samuel, a High-Churchman in orders, aged twenty-three, was a graduate of Oxford, and then connected with the charge of Westminster school. The second son, John, had been absent about a year at the Charter-House school, London, and was twelve years old. The youngest surviving son, Charles, aged seven, was at home, preparing to go to Westminster under the protection of his eldest brother. Of the three sisters, although interesting and gifted persons, we cannot speak.

The people of England little thought that from the family of this humble minister of Epworth the greatest religious movement of the age was to originate. If, at the time spoken of, any remarkable attention was directed towards Epworth parsonage, it was not on account of any anticipation of the renown of the family, but from the strange sounds and shocks which towards the end of the year began to alarm the household, and which have never been satisfactorily accounted for. They were believed to be supernatural; but soon the servants gave up their fright, and from the frequency of his visitations learned to joke about the ghost, whom they called "Old Jeffrey."

If the career of the sons had been matter of interest sufficient to engage attention, it would have seemed no very difficult matter to predict their destiny. The eldest had already found his sphere, and the younger sons, John and Charles, intended, as they were, for that stronghold of priestly conservatism, Oxford, might have been expected to walk in the same path as their brother, passing their lives in some quiet academic office, or comfortable parsonage.

A measure of distinction might perhaps have been anticipated from talents such as theirs, but not the distinction of great innovators or reformers. If of the two younger boys peculiar hope was entertained at home, it was probably of the elder of them, John, rather than of the more restless Charles. John had been saved from fire as by especial providence, and on earth, as among the angels, there is joy over the lost lamb that is found. Mothers are sometimes very shrewd as well as affectionate, and from passages in Mrs. Wesley's papers we infer that she had made him the object of peculiar mention in her prayers, speaking before God" of the soul of this child, whom thou hast so mercifully provided for." How her prayers were granted we shall soon see.

It was

Leave Epworth in the year 1715. Return to it twentyseven years afterwards. The first week in June, 1742, a traveller covered with dust entered the town, and, "not knowing whether there were any left in it now who would not be ashamed of his acquaintance," went to an inn in the middle of the place. Every feature of the village is familiar to him, yet he is among strangers. Only an old servant of his father, and two or three poor women, recognize him, for he had been absent many years. Yet his name needed only to be mentioned to set the people in commotion. John Wesley, son of the former and now deceased minister of the village. It was the famous man who had for about three years been putting vast assemblies into a blaze of enthusiasm by his itinerant preaching. Himself a minister of the Church of England, he called on the curate of the parish, Mr. Romley, and offered to assist him either by preaching or reading prayers. Romley was one of those strong Churchmen of the period, whose respect for orthodoxy in its old routine was only equalled by their relish for a good dinner with abundant potations. The curate's wine-bibbing propensity Mr. Southey is willing to affirm. Romley rejected the traveller's offer with scorn. In the afternoon,

although the people crowded to church to hear their old minister's son, the curate conducted the services himself, and preached against religious enthusiasm, in that peculiar style of eloquence which is most congenial with the after-dinner hours of men of his stamp. After sermon, John Taylor, a companion of Wesley, stood in the church-yard, and gave notice, that "Mr. Wesley, not being permitted to preach in the church, designs to preach here at six o'clock."

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