(iv) A Transfigured Soul
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
should rejoice that they were all so employed, though I should never see them more.''!
The rigid sacramentarianism, the ardent sacerdotal zeal, the pontificial efforts to enforce ecclesiastical discipline, the ascetic legalism, the ill-managed love affair and the community friction, which stand as ear-marks on Wesley's American missionary work, need no elaboration.
The impression he made upon the Georgia community is all too faithfully reflected, alas! in the words of one of their number:
'' We know that we are Protestants ; but as for this man, we know not of what religion fremassieg?
Had Wesley died in his thirty-fifth year, he would have been an unremembered man—capable, methodical, hard-working, but pedantic, legalistic, irascible ; unloved and wellnigh unlovable.
The most charitable tribute that could then have been paid him, would have been that he was a sincere, a selfless, almost an heroic, failure.
(iv) A Transfigured Soul After more than two years of defeat and disillusionment as a Colonial missionary,? Wesley was overwhelmed with perplexity and anguish.
"I went to America to convert the Indians ; but O! who will convert me!" was the agonised cry of his soul.
As he sailed homeward, the hierarchical and formalistic staff upon which he had long been leaning was sorely strained, if not already broken.
Setting foot again on English soil, he knew himself a sadder and a wiser man.
He was less cocksure both of himself and his ecclesiastical dogmas.
The mists and fogs of defeatism and uncertainty enveloped him as a blanket of darkness.
His compass, he knew, was not pointing true.
Gales and tempests broke on his rugged trail.
His confidence in John Wesley the priest was ebbing low.
But as an intrepid pioneer—still conscious of a holy vocation—he groped on and on, through fog, haze and 1 Southey's Wesley, p. 62.
Wesley, referring in later life to this period, says:
'' How well have I since been beaten with my own staff ! "
Again, in old age, he pictures himself at this time as having " only the faith of a servant, not that of a son."
Whitefield's Evangelical conversion preceded Wesley's.
He first set off for America just as John Wesley returned ; and it is remarkable that he was eminently successful where both the Wesleys had failed.
" Wesley's Journal, January 24th, 1738.
THE EMERGENCE
A PROPHET
darkness, o'er crag and cliff, doubting not that the mountain peaks of vision might yet be scaled.
And finally, in the sunrise of a glorious spiritual morning, the fogs were lifted, the mists were dispelled, the tempest was stilled ; the heights were attained.
Wesley, elevated now to the pinnacle of spiritual experience, breathed pure and fragrant air.
Alone before the Holy One he stood.
And there a live coal from Heaven's altar purged his dross, illumined his understanding and sealed him as a messenger of Grace.
But what language can ever explain the mystery and miracle of a soul re-born?
Wesley, lifted to the Holy Mount, was endowed with new sensitivities; new faculties and powers.
A revealing Faith became the eye of his soul, whereby he saw Him Who is Invisible: it became to him a spiritual ear through which he heard the Still, Small Voice divine.
On the Mount of Transfiguration, Wesley's spirit took wings to where the heavens rang with praise.
There he peered forward, and life's horizons were strangely amplified.
'The wondrous awesome music of choirs celestial flooded his soul.
Peace on earth, goodwill toward men" was their swelling refrain.
The very stars in the firmament reflected now the crystal purity of Heaven, where all wills are attuned into harmony with the Will Divine.
Wesley, transfigured, at one with God, surveyed again that " heart-warming" scene ; and the veil of time and sense being for the moment lifted, he envisaged a human society reborn to a spiritual prototype—a society wherein the will of God is done on earth as in Heaven.
Before him there loomed the City of God, the Promised Land : within him was the harmony of a new heaven and a new earth.
Wesley, in "conversion," glimpsed Eternity's strand, and in that new perspective even former enemies were now his friends in God.
Love possessed and transformed his being.
Then the veil fell; the material world returned :
' the air chilled.
Wesley looked now, with a seer's vision, upon the England of his day.
It was the England of the slave-trader, the kidnapper and the smuggler; the England of tradingjustices, South Sea Bubbles and commercial cupidity ; the England of gin-shops, sodden ignorance and incredible child neglect; the England of bestial sports, mad gambling and parading wantonness.
It was the England of corrupt politics and soulless religion: the England of " materialism,"
'' dim ideals? and "' expiring hopes."
The contrast to a now hyper-sensitised soul might seem revolting.
But courage never wavered.
England to Wesley,
I90 ENGLAND:
BEFORE
AND AFTER WESLEY
despite her sins, was still a land of immortal souls.
And henceforth he knew that Christ had given him birth :
""'To brother all the souls on earth."'
He knew, too, that he was now commissioned by the Father of all Love and Mercy and Truth to release England from the bondage of materialism, and point her feet toward the ways of righteousness.
His peculiar mission was to restore Faith to a faithless people. No longer did doubt or uncertainty corrode his mind.
He had groped his way through darkness and pain to the Mount of Transfiguration, where the shackles of serfdom fell from his soul.
No longer had he the faith of a servant, but the faith of a son.
His, at last, was the glorious liberty of an heir of God, anointed to perform a work of mighty deliverance for mankind.
May 24th, 1738, therefore, was Wesley's spiritual birthday.
On that date "the brand plucked out of the burning " was impregnated with spiritual fire that he might set England ablaze for God.
The sophisticated would mock ; vested interests and prejudice would persecute ; the general populace would resist.
But this twice-born man henceforth knew his " calling."
The chains of pedanticism and legalism were now snapped asunder.
The priest was merged in the prophet.
Wesley forthwith was a child of the spirit.
Formality had given place to reality.
And from that day till his spirit returned to its Maker—fifty-three years later—the divine light rarely flickered, and never left his path.
Depression and defeat henceforth were strangers to him.
His "'spiritual birthday" came exactly four months after the agonising cry : "'O ! who will convert me !"
Eo * * The intellectual struggles, the heart-rendings, the seething emotion associated with this period of darkness and dawn, are all recorded in the restrained but unmistakable language of Wesley's Journal : and there the whole story is best pursued.1
Special mention, however, must be made of a young German, who, throughout Wesley's crisis was his counsellor and guide.
Peter Bohler, a graduate of Jena University, was a convert to Moravianism.
Ordained in Germany, and commissioned by Count Zinzendorf for missionary work in America, he now was sojourning in London, prior to departure for the Carolinas.
John and Charles Wesley, in continued association with him, were tremendously impressed by his contagious faith and the calm, assuring power of his personality.
In their benighted * See Journal between January 13th and May 24th, 1738.
THE bMERGENCE
OF "AUP ROP HE T Io! plight, Béhler was to clear their' atmosphere, and point them to the realms of Abundant Life.
A revealing picture of the state of the Wesley brothers at this time is preserved in a letter from Béhler to Zinzendorf :
"IT travelled with the two brothers from London to Oxford.
The elder, John, is a good-natured man ; he knew he did not properly believe on the Saviour, and he was willing to be taught.
His brother . .. is at present very distressed in mind, but does not know how he shall begin to be acquainted with the Saviour.
Our mode of believing .
. is so easy to Englishmen, that they cannot reconcile themselves to it ; if it were a little more artful, they would much sooner find their way into it.
Of faith in Jesus they have no other idea than the generality of people have.
They justify themselves ; and therefore they always take for granted that they believe already, and try to prove their faith by their works, and thus so plague and torment themselves that they are at heart very miserable.''?
It must not be assumed, however, that during this season of bewilderment Wesley became a recluse.
Contrariwise, between February 1st, when he landed in England, and the dawning of the new day in May, he preached scores of sermons in different places; and all were the utterances of a man seeking fearlessly, even desperately, for the pearl of great price.
So trenchant, indeed, was his message that most of the Churches in which he now preached, being offended at his plainness of speech, excluded him henceforth from their pulpits.
The tenor of Bohler's advice when Wesley was plumbing the deeps of his travail, was that he should exercise himself to attain to living faith in the living God, through the crucified but living mediator, Jesus Christ.
Wesley, knowing his faith to be weak, turned to his counsellor with the pathetic query :
'"' How can I preach to others, when I have not faith myself?"
paradoxical reply was pregnant with poignant truth :
" Preach Faith," he urged, " till you have it, and because you have it you will preach faith."?
Wesley, accepted the challenge.
Searching the Scriptures, he threw himself on God, and proved finally to his soul's content that the fruits of pure, living, disinterested Faith are indeed good.
He discovered that Faith is the mysterious dynamic which brings divine, unsuspected
1L,, Tyerman, Life and Times of John Wesley, Vol. I, pp. 181-2.
2 Coleridge said of Bohler's advice that it was equivalent to saying : " Tell a lie long enough and often enough and you will be sure to end by believing it'?
This shallow comment reflects on Coleridge rather than Bohler, showing that he failed totally to comprehend a situation of peculiar delicacy.
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AND AFTER WESLEY
energy into the soul of man, and urges him on to works of righteousness.
Far more completely than Luther, Wesley came to realise that good works are the inseparable properties of living faith, even as warmth and light are the inseparable properties of the sun: that the nature of true faith is to bear holy fruit.
Hence, accepting Béhler's advice, he followed only after the highest, and so doing, entered into a warm, glowing communion with Christ.
The mantle of the Lord was cast about him; the water of life purged and sustained his soul; the Holy Spirit of God possessed his being.
Two paramount experiences are linked with Wesley's conversion.
One was the singing of the anthem in St. Paul's Cathedral on the afternoon of May 24th:
" Out of the deep have I called unto Thee, O Lord:
Lord, hear my voice. O let Thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint."
And as the melodious strains reverberated from the dome of that great temple, Wesley found comfort in the words:
" My soul fleeth unto the Lord : before the morning watch, I say, before the morning watch."
The other, and more fructifying experience, was in the evening of the same day, when " very unwillingly " he attended "a society in Aldersgate Street."
Here the Leader read Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans, with a result thus depicted by Wesley : " About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for my 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."
"I began to pray with all my might," continues Wesley's record, '' for those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me.
I then testified openly to all there what I now first felt in my heart.'??
Pivotal, however, as was Wesley's spiritual birthday, and sustaining as were the springs of love, peace and power which then burst forth as a living fountain in his soul, the serene joy and irresistible gladness, which so characterised his life through all his astounding labours, came gradually—even as the opening of a flower.
Wesley's Aldersgate experience was a conversion, a transfiguration: it strangely warmed his heart and filled his spirit to overflowing with gratitude, veneration and awe.
Yet he could not long remain on the mountain top.
Those * See Psalm cxxx.
* Journal, May 24th, 1738.
OPPOSITION TO THE REVIVAL
1. A mob uprising against Wesley, in Wednesbury (top) (From the painting by Marshall Claxton, R.A.)
2. Whitefield preaching at Moorfields Fair Ground, London.
Note man raised aloft with whip; hornblowing from tree: and pole raised to strike preacher from behind (bottom)