In Other Lands
IN OTHER LANDS
On a clear October day, in 1735, John and Charles Wesley boarded a little sailing vessel bound for the colony of Georgia.
They were going with a company of immigrants from debtors' prisons. On the ship also was a group of Germans who belonged to a religious order called Moravians.
The boat had no sooner sailed than Charles began to get together a small class among the children. John started to teach
English to the Moravians. At the same time he learned German from them. He could already speak Latin, French, and Italian.
The voyage was a long one across stormy seas. In January they sailed into the outskirts of a hurricane. Many were ill from the pounding of the waves and the tossing of the vessel. John, who was not seasick, went among the passengers and helped them all he could. He wrote in his journal:
"The waves of the sea were mighty, and raged horribly. The winds roared about and whistled as distinctly as a human voice.
Every ten minutes came a shock against the stern or side of the ship, which one would think should dash the planks in pieces."
He admired the calm faith of the Moravians. Even the tiniest German children seemed not to be afraid. John made friends with the children as he learned their language. After the storms died down he spent much time talking and singing with them.
At the end of a long four months the little ship came to the shores of Georgia and sailed into the harbor of Savannah. The weary passengers went ashore to build their homes and make a new life.
Savannah was a small town facing the Savannah River, with the great unbroken forests of wild America at its back. From the settlement pioneers were going out into the wilderness to clear land and fight Indians, and to make farms with the labor of their hands. A few men were already owners of large plantations in the colony.
Charles Wesley took up his secretarial work. John Wesley found that he had been appointed the official pastor of the colony.
This prevented him from carrying out his plan of going into the forests to work with the Indians. He was disturbed also that when the well-to-do people of the colony came to hear him preach they were dressed as fancily as the gay upper classes in London.
John Wesley was a young man strong in his beliefs. He had not yet learned any tolerance of the faults of others. He preached sternly against frivolity, and made many enemies by doing so.
Both of the Wesleys went to the smaller villages near Savannah to preach, but everywhere they met opposition and were able to accomplish nothing with the adults. oie)
But John Wesley always made friends with children. Now he and Charles Delamotte, the friend who had accompanied them to the colony, thought that they could educate the children of Savannah. They started the first Sunday school. One morning
Mr. Delamotte told John Wesley that the poorer children were no longer attending the school. He thought this was because the richer boys made fun of them for not wearing shoes.
John Wesley thought for a moment. Then he said quietly, "T will teach the class today."
He sat down and took off his shoes and hose. Then, calmly and with great dignity, he walked barefooted to the school and into the little room where the boys were scuffling and shouting.
He stood silently until the room was quiet, and then commenced the day's work. The boys stared in amazement at his bare feet.
"Look," they whispered, "the parson is barefoot!"
Every Sunday their teacher appeared with his feet bare, but said nothing about it. After a while the boys became more serious and seemed ashamed of their cruel behavior. The pupils who had no shoes came back. And before long some of the boys requested to be admitted to communion.
After a few months Charles went back to England. John spoke so sternly in his sermons that those he offended began to plot against him. Once he refused to admit a wealthy young woman to communion. Her uncle, the chief magistrate of Savannah, brought the minister to public trial and refused to let him answer the charges. Wesley felt that his trip to America had been a failure. He decided sadly that he should return to England.
When he stepped ashore again in his own land he felt that
he had not had enough faith and that he himself, for all his trials, had never been a really good Christian. He realized that he had been too concerned with saving his own soul and had not had enough understanding of others.
One of the fine things that John recorded in his journal as a result of his trip to America was his friendship with the German
Moravians. In London he met three of them and traveled to Oxford with them. He found them interesting, although he could not agree with their religious views. At Oxford John preached to a large group of prisoners at the Castle. Here he began his work once more in England, in the same place where he had begun to preach.
One evening a friend asked John to go to St. Paul's Cathedral.
There he heard the anthem, "Out of the deep have I called unto Thee, O Lord." That evening he visited a religious society meeting. During the reading of Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans he felt that his heart was strangely warmed, and that he did believe completely. oS)
Charles wrote in his journal of that night: "Towards ten my brother was brought in triumph by a troop of friends, and declared,
'I believe.' We sang the hymn with great joy and parted with prayer." The hymn was one Charles had written the previous day.
John Wesley wished to know more about the Moravians. He had been told of the two settlements they had founded at Marienborn and at Herrnhut. Now he decided to make the journey into Germany to visit these communities.
He first paid his mother a visit at Salisbury, where she was staying with one of her daughters. Then he joined a group of English and German travelers who were also going to see the Moravian communities. It was no easy matter to travel on the continent of Europe then. Innkeepers were suspicious of men dressed in sober cloth, and often refused them a night's lodging.
But the travelers were entertained by friends in Holland. There they admired the clean streets, the neat dress of the people, and the canals bordered by trees.
They went on foot through the Dutch country and into Germany. At Cologne they took a boat up the Rhine. The seriousmannered men from England were much amazed at the Lutherans, who ended their Sunday with dancing to the music of fiddles. And they saw the Roman Catholics worshiping singly, kneeling before images in shrines.
The voyage up the Rhine was peaceful and beautiful. The little vessel was pulled by horses on a towing path, and moved slowly. Inside the boat the passengers sat, gazing up at the steep mountains, wooded to the tops. Here and there a monastery or castle frowned down on the green Rhine waters. Near Frankfurt
they got off, weary from the journey. They were surprised to find themselves halted at the city gates. The guard refused to let them in, for they had no passes. Then John Wesley remembered that the father of one of his Moravian friends in England lived here. He sent word to Mr. Bohler, who came at once, took them into the city, and to his home. Here he entertained them until they were rested and ready to go on to Herrnhut.
They started to walk across Germany, with its neat farms and old cities. But many times they had to find a dirty, dark little inn in a village because the larger towns would not let them in. They passed through the busy cities of Leipzig and Dresden and journeyed up the Elbe River. At last they came to Herrnhut. Here they were welcomed into the little community and remained for some weeks.
The religious settlement of Herrnhut was located on the edge of Bohemia. It was a lovely little village, surrounded by gardens and forests. The brethren worked together in the fields for the benefit of the whole community, and led simple, devout
lives. The village had a school, a church, and a hall in a building called the Orphan House. The group of children looked clean and happy. What a fine thing such an orphan house would be in England! John thought. How peaceful and how useful was the life of this place!
John Wesley wished to stay a long time. But he knew that he had work to do in his own country. So he told his friends in Herrnhut good-by and returned as he had come, on foot, to Rotterdam, where he took ship for England.
GOME TO THE FIELDS
One evening John Wesley walked through the London streets to a meeting of Methodists. His eyes were on the rowdy people.
Overhead huge signs swung out above the streets, which were as narrow as passageways. In London, instead of a number, each house had a name and a sign—The Blue Boar, The Armored Horse, or The Rollicking Pig. Only a man as small as John Wesley could walk along without cracking his head on them. it was not really safe to walk the London streets, even for a minister in his sober clothing. Already gin shops were filling with drunken men and shouting women. Already tough street urchins were fighting in the filth flung from house windows. 'The terrible
Mohawks, however, were not yet out. These were young dandies who amused themselves by cruel torture of men and women in the streets at night.
"Truly," thought John Wesley, as he looked about him, "truly
the people, both high and low, could not be more depraved than they are now."
For some months after his return to England John Wesley, with his brother Charles, had been busy organizing Methodist
Societies. These had been formed to enable a few religious folk in London to pray and sing hymns and help each other. Such a group met at a shop called "The Bible and Sun," in Wild Street.
As their numbers grew, they moved to a room in Fetter Lane. The leaders of the societies who were most earnest in their work and able in organizing were later appointed by John Wesley as lay pastors. The societies formed classes to read good books and to help those in need. Members were expected to give a penny a week to the upkeep of the society, and share in all the work.
John's thoughts turned to a letter that he had received that day from his Oxford friend, George Whitefield. Whitefield had been refused the use of churches and was now preaching out of doors. The first time that Whitefield preached outside a church, near Bristol, people had flocked to hear him. He continued to hold meetings in the open for six weeks. Then he wrote asking John
Wesley to take his place, for he wished to start preaching in another town.
John felt troubled. He was an ordained minister of the Church of England. He had no wish to start a new church. But only a few churches were open to Methodists. John was very busy in London, preaching in several churches. He wrote to George Whitefield that at Islington, when he left the church, "the fields, after service, were white with people praising God."
This small man, in his black clothes, frowned as he picked his
way carefully among the wild street gangs to Fetter Lane. It was a hard decision to make. He was thinking: I can scarcely reconcile myself to this strange way of preaching in the fields. I would think the saving of souls almost a sin if not done in church. But he remembered how Jesus had preached the Sermon on the Mount.
And when he reached the door at Fetter Lane he had decided to go to Bristol, if the Society approved, and preach in the open.
On March 31 he met Whitefield in Bristol. That first time John Wesley spoke outdoors to three thousand people. He remained in Bristol until June, preaching to growing crowds, organizing Methodist Societies, and reading prayers to inmates of prisons.
He began to collect money to provide a building in Bristol for the services and the societies. This was to be a place in the Horse Fair, with a chapel and meeting rooms, and it was to become a permanent meeting place for Methodists.
When John went back to London he found the room in Fetter Lane too small. So he borrowed money from a friend to repair an old deserted cannon foundry. At the Foundry, as the place was afterward called, he established the London headquarters for Methodism.
Methodist Societies were being formed in all parts of London, and John Wesley soon was riding his horse to distant towns to preach. He was sorry that his friend George Whitefield had decided to leave the Methodist group and join the Calvinists. T'wo of his other friends had gone with the German Moravians. But his brother Charles was always a good companion. Charles often traveled with John. He, also, took an active share of the work of the Methodist Societies, and preached in the open frequently.
Charles Wesley had a talent for powerful preaching, as well as for writing beautiful hymns.
In 1742 John Wesley went to preach to the miners. He was always concerned not only with religious services but with trying to improve lawless conditions. People were so dishonest at voting time that elections were jokes to them. Smuggling was so much practiced on the coasts that it was thought an ordinary job. John
Wesley spoke against dishonesty and smuggling. This caused some to leave the Methodist Societies. But then better men and women came to join. Everywhere Methodism was creating better citizens, and turning them from violence.
John Wesley went to the mining town of Newcastle to visit a dying friend. There he saw the worst conditions of any place he had been. Nobody seemed interested in hearing a sermon.
At seven in the morning John Wesley rose and went into the streets of the town. He walked to Sandgate, in the poorest section, with his companion, John Taylor. Standing in the street they began to sing the Hundredth Psalm. A few frowsy people came out to see what the excitement was about. They stood listening. More came — until nearly fifteen hundred had gathered.
Wesley preached to them. That afternoon he preached again, and an immense crowd assembled.
None of these people had even imagined that a minister, or anyone else, would be interested in them. Now they begged
Wesley to stay and talk with them.
This was-a tiring visit for John Wesley, but he prepared to leave Newcastle with contentment in his heart. Never had he seen people more eager to hear him.
John Taylor was delayed in leaving, but said that he could catch up with Mr. Wesley. As John Wesley mounted his horse and jogged out through the town alone, he drew from his saddlebag a worn copy of Shakespeare's plays to read along the road.
Suddenly his horse shied. Wesley almost dropped his book.
"Whoa, whoa there!"
He reached over to pat the horse's neck, and saw that there was a tiny child in the road. It was so thin that its bones seemed to thrust out through its skin. John Wesley dismounted and picked up the little one. He carried it to the roadside, where he saw a woman sitting beside an older child. The woman was white and shaking. Without a word he placed the child beside its mother.
Then he went to his saddlebags. From them he drew all of the bread and meat that he had placed there for his day's food. He put it into the woman's hands. Then he took from his pocket some pills, which he laid on top of the food.
"Here," he said. "Divide the food among you, for you look starved. And then do you take these pellets, one at morning and one at night. They have aided in curing fevers before now. You have as bad an ague as IJ have ever seen. Can you get to your home?"