Whitefield died at Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1770, about the time Asbury entered the field from which the famous orator was suddenly removed. Charles Wesley, though nearly five years younger than John, died on March 29th, 1788, His unequalled brother, on whom rested the glow of his approaching translation, was preaching in Staffordshire at the time. At the very moment when Charles passed away, the congregation, unconscious of this, was singing his hymn, "Come, let us join our friends above Wesley did not hear of his death until the day after the funeral. He deeply felt the separation, and a fortnight later, when attempting to give out another of Charles's hymns on "Wrestling Jacob," he faltered at the lines, "My company before is gone, And I am left alone with Thee;" sat down in the pulpit, and buried his face in his hands. The singing ceased, and the people wept with him. In a little while he regained self-control, and proceeded with the service. He hastened to London from the North, that he might console the widow and children of the departed poet. His sermon at Leatherhead, Surrey, on Wednesday the 23d of February, was his last public utterance; the text being, "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near." With this message of mercy and exhortation his peerless ministry ended as it had begun, in the urgency of compassion, the strength of righteousness, the light of love, and the demonstration of the Spirit. The next day he spent with Mr. Wolff at Balham, and there penned his well-known letter to William Wilberforce, concluding with the stirring appeal, "O! be not weary in well doing. Go on, in the name of God, and in the power of His might, till even American slavery, the vilest that ever saw "1 the sun, shall vanish away before it. . . It was entirely appropriate that the warfare he had waged for sixty years upon the cruelty of society toward the fallen and the helpless should conclude with this impassioned protest against human bondage. Returning to his house in City Road on Friday, the 25th, he spent the remaining hours in prayer and praise. During an interval he asked those around him that his sermon on "The Love of God to fallen man" should be scattered broadcast and given to everybody. Later, he blessed them, and lifting his hand in grateful triumph, exclaimed, "The best of all is, God is with us!" Shortly afterwards, on March the second, 1791, this splendid being put on immortality. EPILOGUE THE history of Methodism beyond its leading events in the eighteenth century has been necessarily excluded from this account. Speaking generally, it followed three main lines of development: the rise and progress of the Evangelical Revival; the organization of the Methodist Churches therefrom; and their more familar expansions of the modern period, which by no means exhaust the results of the movement, for in many instances its palpable and its hidden influences have blended with the life of the nations it affected, purifying and strengthening them for domestic, social, and political reforms. Nor have the limits imposed here allowed us to dwell at length upon the multifarious details of Wesley's personal career, which abound in the biographies of Southey, Watson, Lelièvre, Tyerman, Telford, Fitchett, and Winchester, the books of Workman, and also in Wesley's self-revelatory Journals. He had the serenity of one who is at home in his own mind, who draws his water from his own fountain, and by means of whose inward light the path ahead is always plain. These 1 L. Tyerman: "Life and Times of John Wesley"; Vol. III, p. 650. outstanding qualities, and others which have been mentioned, reveal with unusual directness their heavenly sources. Like the large-minded man in Aristotle's "Ethics" he thought himself equal to grand moral achievements, and was justified to the extent that the rare virtue of absolute disinterestedness gradually became a ruling factor in his conduct. He lavished all his energies and some of his best years upon the search for divine illumination. This obtained, he at once became the director of a religious crusade which has helped to upraise the race. The means he employed were exposed to reprobation, but they proved stronger than the formidable display of earthly and ecclesiastical powers arrayed against them. Nor is it possible to escape the conclusion that in all these things his course and destiny were not self-chosen, after the usual meaning of the phrase, but in a special and peculiar sense shaped by the guidance of his Maker. For God has always been pleased to build his best bridges with human piers, never allowing their faults to impede the workmanship when men were solicitous that they should not do so. The leisure of mind which followed the stirring epoch in which Wesley acted so creatively has produced a number of tributes vindicating him in every quarter of his historical firmament. Mr. Augustine Birrell says that "no man lived nearer the center than John Wesley, neither Clive nor Pitt, neither Mansfield nor Johnson. You cannot cut him out of our national life. No single figure influenced so many minds, no single voice touched so many hearts. No other man did such a life's work for England." Macaulay's better known eulogy is equally generous. The famous essayist compared him with Richelieu, whose genius solidified the French nation and stimulated the authority of its monarchy. In like manner Wesley's weak chain of organizations was lengthened link by link, and as they developed he formulated rules for their guidance, until 1 "John Wesley," in "Essays and Addresses"; p. 35. Methodism became nothing less than an army intent on the moral conquest of the race. An eighteenth century man, he shared in no small degree the strange contradictions of his age. His character was both simple and complex because it was in some measure the reflection of the people in which he moved, whose national texture has been thickly packed and plaited fold upon fold by an endless variety of custom and habit. In a corresponding way he dealt with many-sided truths and situations, undeterred by dread of paradox or the inconsistency of policies which might appear to lead in opposite directions. His experiences were both extensive and remarkable, and perhaps this may explain the supernatural aspect which he gave to them. Yet in matters where he was not directly interested he was capable of a becoming skepticism, and his belief in witchcraft and in the doctrine of particular Providence, which he sometimes carried to great lengths, showed no more credulity than did the notions of Addison, the pride of Oxford, whose "Essays on the Evidences of Christianity include stories as absurd as the Cock Lane ghost, and forgeries as rank as William Henry Ireland's "Vortigern." Exact and vigorous in his thinking, Wesley's ideas were as far removed from what is meretricious or vulgar as were those of the best classics with which he was familiar. In his case great talents and considerable learning proved their suitability for a world-wide and permanent religious propagandism, and his career as an evangelist, who was also a man of culture, is an effective answer to those who deprecate the value of intellectual attainments in such efforts. There have been many imitators of Wesley, but, as yet, he has had no successor. His steadfast mind discouraged the fitful gleams of selfdeception from which he was not entirely free. Hasty or false assumptions were distasteful to his more robust processes of thought, and any tendency to purely emotional excitement in himself or in others was generally subdued by his innate conservatism. Clerics and philosophers whose prejudices he encountered dubbed him a fanatic; the believers whose faith he aided extolled him as a saint and a sage. He went quietly forward, living down rancor and disregarding praise, examining and restating his doctrinal views and qualifying them by their hold on life. A pervading reasonableness gave weight to his utterance, and its sincerity and restraint enabled him to overcome his critics. In the excitement attending a great revival he did not forfeit his sanity, his poise, his love of books, or his good breeding. His prescience as a statesman preserved that which he had won by aggressive attacks upon degeneracy and vice. And throughout life he readily yielded to truths hitherto neglected, or to aught else when refusal to yield would have been less than right or rational. Although his conversion was beyond doubt, he repeatedly returned to it, allowing neither foregone conclusions nor deference to pious opinion to check his constant scrutiny of the basis of his assurance. In many of his confessions one knows not whether the feeling is deeper than the reflection, or the reflection deeper than the feeling. If some of his instinctive recognitions of God were in their nature mystical rather than intellectual, it would be difficult to overestimate the corrective value of such a religion of the heart when contrasted with that latitudinarianism which denied the possibility of Wesley's transfer into the boundless realm of the living, moving, progressive Spirit who led him into light, wisdom, and truth; into the very presence and persuasion of the Soul of souls. A sense of spiritual union springing from his voluntary surrender to Christ was strengthened by grave and habitual meditation, until he reached the plane where contradictions cease, Pondering the highest he knew till it became more than his ideal, he appropriated it as a part of himself, thus blending his life with the life everlasting that he might do God's work in the world. |