God's Good Rider
GOD'S GOOD RIDER
In some English villages a stone cross is placed in the square or green. This is called the market cross. Here, in the town of Bolton, in Lancashire, on the base of such a cross, John Wesley stood. It was a hot day, and the August sun beat down through dark green leaves of old trees. On the trampled grass a wild mob fought. They hooted and threw stones and tried to tear the little minister from his place on the base of the stone cross.
But there he stood, as firm as the cross itself. When three of the ruffians leaped up behind him they were the ones who received stones flung at John Wesley. One was shouting into the preacher's ear when a rock hit him on the cheek. A second was struck on the head just as he tried to push Wesley down. And a third received a blow on the hand as he reached out for the minister. All the while John Wesley preached on, calmly and confidently. After a time the people became quieter, and then began to listen to him.
Once, while preaching near Bedford, he was interrupted time after time. After a while he saw a rough man approach the front of the group. The man carried a small sack in one hand.
Wesley saw him take from the sack some eggs and place them carefully in his pockets. Wesley went on preaching, but watched the man. He expected any minute to be pelted with eggs.
But there was a tall boy standing near the ruffian. He, too, had seen the eggs go into the pockets. Slowly he edged nearer and nearer. I'hen he gave a sudden jump, flinging his arms around the man ina tight bear hug.
"In an instant," chuckled Wesley later, as he told the story,
"the rufhan was perfumed all over, though it was not so sweet a perfume as balsam."
During many years John Wesley was called different things— "an enemy of the people," and others as bad. But he went on his way, paying no attention to them. His personal life was not happy.
Charles had married a fine woman, and was living in Bristol. He did not travel so much now. But John had a wife who was so bad tempered that he could not live with her. His work was his whole life.
At a Methodist Conference John Wesley was asked this question: "What may we reasonably believe to be God's purpose in raising up the preachers called Methodists?"
Wesley pondered this for four days, praying, discussing it with his followers. Then he answered: "To retorm the nation, more particularly the Church; to spread scriptural holiness over the land."
But there were those who did not want to see the nation
reformed. They did not like to have poor people think that they were as good as the upper classes. All sorts of disturbances were tried at his meetings. Bells were rung, ballad singers hired, milldams broken to flood the place of meeting, drums beaten. Yet nothing stopped the Methodists for long, and they usually came out of such contests the winner.
Once at a mine near Pembroke a dandified gentleman forced his way in and told the people roughly to go home and not to listen to these Methodists. At this the boy who drove the chaise, or carriage, in which John Wesley had come to the meeting, spoke up to reprove the man for his language.
The man snarled at him, "Do you think I need to be taught by a chaise boy?"
The boy looked him in the eye and answered calmly, "Really, sir, I do think so."
As the years passed, people became more friendly to the Methodists. After a time wild riots and street battles almost stopped. Methodism had spread from one end of the British Isles
to the other. John Wesley continued to travel on an average of five thousand miles a year, preaching fifteen times a week or more.
He had been ill twice, once when at Oxford, and again when he was fifty-one years old. Both times his illness had been tuberculosis.
But he recovered from it completely. He felt that his early journeys, which accustomed him to cold and rain and wind, and preaching in the open, had toughened his body. They made it possible for him to endure hardships that most men could not have survived. And it was the outdoor life that kept him well.
John Wesley never owned much. He said with a smile, "I get all I can, and give all I can; that is, all I have."
Until he was seventy years old, Wesley journeyed on horseback, book in hand. There were no roads passable enough for a carriage in the north of England, and the coach went only as far as York.
Wesley always rose at four in the morning, and seldom went to bed before midnight. Sometimes he had accidents, when his horse went lame, or suddenly fell upon its head, as at Bristol once.
But Wesley got up unhurt and preached to seven thousand people.
John Wesley always considered the Methodist Societies as part of the Church of England. When the American colonies began their fight for independence, Wesley was not in sympathy with it. He advised the Methodists to support the king. After the Revolution was over, however, he accepted the new country, and helped establish the Methodist Church in America as a separate church.
As the minister grew old, roads all over England were improved, and he traveled more often by carriage. He fitted out one end of his carriage with a writing table and bookshelves. Once, when he was eighty-three years of age, he was in a carriage on his way to preach at St. Ives. The storms had been so severe that the lowlands were flooded and the driver feared to attempt the trip. An hostler at the London Inn offered to drive the minister. But when they reached Hayle they found that the low, sandy area was covered with the tide, and the driver feared that they could not cross to St. Ives. The old man thrust his head from the window. With the salty wind blowing his long white hair, he called, "Take the sea, take the sea!"
"Sir," shouted the driver, "the horses must swim, then, for the waters are very deep, and rising."
"What is your name, driver?" asked the minister.
"Peter, sir."
"Then, Peter," called the old man in a firm voice, "fear not, thou shalt not sink."
The driver whipped up his horses and they swam across. The water came into the carriage, and the driver held his breath for O2
en that they would be drowned. But the storm died down, and they reached the other side safely. When they arrived at the inn,
John Wesley saw to it that the driver and his horses were fed and warmed before he took care of his own needs. Then he went to the chapel to preach.
In these later years Wesley's visits to far parts of England were occasions for general rejoicing in the communities that he visited. The mobs had disappeared. He was the best beloved man in all England. This pleased him, and he enjoyed greeting his friends again.
The slave trade, in which hardened sea captains captured African natives and sold them, John Wesley called, "that execrable sum of all villainies." With letters, pamphlets, and his writings for the Society for the Suppression of the Slave Trade, he fought a constant war against slavery as an institution.
In all his travels John Wesley kept writing in his journals.
They told not only of what he did and thought, but of the life of the people he met day by day. These journals, at the time of his death, numbered twenty-six bound volumes.
John Wesley lived during most of the eighteenth century.
During this time hardy English traders had sailed to undiscovered lands. The American colonies had become the United States. The French Revolution had taken place. John Wesley had seen the coming of the steam engine, and inventions of machines for making cloth. He had been interested from the first in Benjamin
Franklin and his experiments in electricity. He had watched England change as people went to work in factories. He saw canals and roads open up wild country. He lived when great artists and writers
were picturing England. Yet it was John Wesley, and his brother Charles, who made people aware of their responsibilities to God and to their fellow men. And it was these two who gave people a singing religion.
For many years John and Charles Wesley shared their work and their thoughts. When John was eighty-five years old, Charles was taken seriously ill. John was away in Shropshire preaching when his brother died. Although Charles had not accompanied him on his travels for some time, John missed his brother sadly.
But he knew that Charles was with him in spirit.
John was especially fond of his niece Sarah, the daughter of Charles. She was growing up to be a fine, intelligent girl. She sometimes traveled with her uncle, and he discussed with her his hopes for public education. She read books with him, and helped him put the books into simple language for the people. John
Wesley published more than four hundred books for the people, and also edited a magazine. The money from the publications was used to aid church work.
Among the books that were most interesting to Sarah, as well as to John Wesley, were those on medical subjects. Wesley was the first to open a dispensary where poor people could get medicines free of charge.
John Wesley continued to preach and to travel almost until his death. He preached his last sermon when he was eighty-eight years old, only a week before he died. That same week he wrote his last letter in which he urged a fight on the slave trade.
And then for several days he felt weak and ill. Once he roused to sing a hymn. And then he said, "The best of all is, God is with us."
On the second day of March, 1791, the old minister wakened to see several of his friends and relatives standing by his bed.
John Bradford said softly: "Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and this heir of glory shall come in." As he spoke, John Wesley said again, "The best of all is,
God is with us." Then he closed his eyes and seemed to sleep.
John Wesley had said that he wished no crowd at his funeral.
So his friends buried him at night in the yard of the City Road Chapel, just across the street from the grave of his mother. In England, in Scotland, in Ireland, and across the seas in America, people mourned his passing.
On a tablet placed in honor of John and Charles Wesley in famous Westminster Abbey, in London, are John Wesley's words:
"T look upon all the world as my parish."
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