Mamie Boyd's brother, Doc Corbell, was buried
yesterday at Bastrop.
We want to remember this family in our prayers.
Bertie Morgan's sister, Clara Pankretz, died
yesterday in San Antonio.
We don't have the details on the funeral
arrangements, but it will be in San Antonio.
Also remember Bertie and her family in your prayers.
Ruby Smith's brother, Leland Duke, died this
morning in Belton.
Funeral will be Friday at 11 a.m. at the Belton
Church of Christ.
Jo Watson will stand at Hendricks today at Fort Patis.
She will have an arteriogram and faces the
possibility of surgery.
We want to remember her in our prayers.
It was announced Sunday that Betty Henion will
have surgery this week.
However, she is now scheduled for surgery on
November the 9th at Wilford Hall Hospital
in San Antonio.
Their daughter, Alicia, has been released from
the hospital.
In Hendricks Hospital, Delano Roberts in 6519,
Luther Morris in 3110, Ph.D. Hill in 6413-Fatahs,
Jo Watson, Ms. Ross, Mike's mother, in 3104, in
Humana, Ray Agnew, in 409, and in the Carlswell
Air Force Base, H.L. Haynes.
Let us all bow.
Our Father in Heaven, we lay before you all of
these who long to be remembered.
We pray that you will bless them out of your
love and out of your wisdom and out of your
power, bless and take care of them.
We pray tonight, Father, that you will forgive
us of every sin and failing and shortcoming.
We pray that our love for thee and our love for
the church and for thy word may grow day
by day.
Bless this church tonight as it worships, as it studies.
Bless every teacher, bless everyone in all the classes.
We pray from week to week, Father, that we may
be coming here of Heaven.
And keep our missionaries, may they not be
discouraged, may they be strong, and may their
harvest be great.
We pray, Father, that all of our work may be
for thy glory, for we pray in Jesus' name, amen.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on
earth, where moth and rust consume and where
the thieves break in and steal.
But lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven,
where neither moth nor rust consumes and where
the thieves do not break in and steal, for
where your treasure is, there will your heart
be also.
Now we rejoin in the hymn of Jesus.
I've got to give my life, I've got to glorify,
I've got to die, I've got to stay, I've got
to live, I've got to die.
Tonight we cover a lot of territory, it may
seem impossible, covering so many great things.
One English historian has said that the 3
greatest things of the century were Industrial
Revolution, Napoleon, John Wesley.
I'm sure if an American historian had been
doing it, he'd added to it the American Revolution.
We're going to try to wind up the Methodist
movement next time, the American phase of
it, Methodism moving to America.
To John Wesley, his Aldergate experience, and I
hope that as we mention some of these
names, you hear them echoing in American
history, in English history, churches that take their
names after Alder's Gate Church, his Aldergate
experience meant a change, a change from servanthood
to sonship.
If you look back, I think you can feel up to
this point somewhat of a failure, disappointment
over and over.
Then it changes, mounts to great success, oh
not at once, a lot of hardships, but to
Wesley the secret of it was the change from
servanthood to sonship, a new outlook on life.
The visit to Heronhood had deepened and
enriched his understanding of what it meant to
be a
Son of God.
Filled with the conviction of this sonship,
John Wesley came back to take up the work
in England.
After his return from Germany, Wesley spent
much of his time with the little societies
that existed alongside the churches.
These societies were nothing new, they were not
something Wesley started.
More than fifty years before Wesley's time,
they had begun to spring up throughout England
to meet needs that were not being met either by
the established church or the dissenters.
They were made up of like-minded people who
professed a loyalty to the churches, but who
were seeking for satisfactions to special
needs, kind of under the umbrella of the churches.
Samuel Wesley, John's father, established such
a society at Epworth to further spiritual
living among the more devoted and zealous as
the parishioners, a kind of church within
the church.
There was the equivalent of it over in the
Lutheran church in Germany.
The societies still existed in Wesley's time,
but they passed their prime when John Wesley
began to visit them.
And the fact that they had begun to wane was
the fact of the kind of reception that they
gave Wesley.
As the churches closed their doors to John
Wesley, he turned to the societies.
He preached in the meetings of the societies
and in the homes of members of the societies,
and he preached in the prisons.
On the suggestion of Peter Bowler, the
Moravian, the Weslis had started a little
society on
May the 1st, 1738, that met at James Hutton's
shop, the Bible and Sun on Wild Street.
On September the 25th, 1738, after John's
return from Germany, the society moved to
Federal Lane.
John called this the third beginning of Methodism.
First one was the Little Society of Oxford.
The second was the Little Society that he
founded in the church in Georgia.
Now the third one, the Federal Lane, 32
members, Wesley's entry in his journal for the first
Sunday back in England was, I began again to
declare in my own country the glad tidings
of salvation.
He preached 3 times that Sunday, and then in
the evening expounded the scriptures to
a large company in the ministry.
He met again on Monday with the Little Society.
On Tuesday he preached to condemned felons in
Newgate Prison, or for them salvation.
Tuesday evening he preached to a society in
Bear Yard on the subject of repentance and
remission of sins.
On Wednesday evening he spoke the truth and
love to the society in Aldersgate Street.
He got to preach in a few London churches, but
by the end of 1738 most of the churches
were closed to him because of his enthusiasm in
preaching conversion.
Shortly after his return to England, he visited
Oxford, where he received a cool reception
when he preached on salvation by grace.
But it was on the way to Oxford that he read
Jonathan Edward's account of the great revival
in New England, and Wesley believed it was the
work of God.
Back in London, John and Charles called on the
Bishop of London, Edmund Gibson, the greatest
church lawyer in England, and they put the
question to him whether those baptized by
dissenters should be rebaptized in the Church
of England.
The Bishop was more lenient than the Westlies.
The Westlies insisted these people had to be
baptized over.
They asked the Bishop whether the religious
societies were legal.
The Bishop wouldn't commit himself.
He promised not to receive accusations against
the Westlies without two or three witnesses.
John Wesley held to the idea that the little
Methodist societies were a part of the Church
of England.
He and the Saudis believed they were loyal to
the Church while fostering a religious
life of their own.
He very seldom bothered to consult the bishops
or the Church officials, and his societies
were never formally recognized or sanctioned by
the English Church.
The attitude of the Church was largely one of
indifference, and this resulted in a tolerance
that left Wesley free.
He was a law to himself, but throughout life
remained fundamentally loyal to the Church.
As long as he lived, the Methodists did not
become a separate set.
By and large, Methodism was drawn from the
unchurched of the lower middle class and then
of the very poor, the low class.
On New Year's Day, 1739, seven old Oxford
Methodists, including the Westlies and Whitefield,
and sixty laymen met in a love feast at Federal Lane.
After the close of the love feast, a number of
the friends continued in prayer until three
o'clock in the morning.
Wesley considered that night one of the high
points of his experience.
When George Whitefield left England for America
for the first time, he was the most popular
preacher in London.
When he returned to England in 1738, about a
year later, he found most of the churches
closed to him.
His journals had been published, the journals
in which he had charged that most of the clergy
were unconverted.
His criticisms had turned both Anglicans and
dissenters against him.
The preaching of the Westlies had added to the hostility.
A misunderstanding about an invitation to
preach at St. Margaret's, Westminster, Whitefield
thought he had an invitation.
He got there and found the church closed to him.
There was some commotion about it, and it was
portrayed in the newspapers as a disgraceful brawl.
In February, Whitefield left London in disgust
and went to Bristol.
On the way at Bath, he was refused permission
to preach in the Abbey.
At St. Mary's of Radcliffe in Bristol, the
rector refused him permission to preach.
His friend, Doug, the prison keeper, did allow
him to preach in the prison.
Shut out of the churches, Whitefield turned to
field preaching.
Four miles from Bristol was Kingwood, which had
been a park, but with the discovery of
coal, it had turned into a barren place.
Kingwood was filled with lawless drinking coal
miners, most of whom had never been in
the church.
On February the 17th, 1739, Whitefield stood on
a mound in Kingswood and preached to the
coal miners who gathered round.
As he preached, the crowd grew.
Whitefield was deeply moved by the white
gutters made by the tears rolling down the coal-blackened
cheeks of the miners.
Daily, the crowds increased.
It was the beginning of a great revival.
On March the 22nd, 1739, Whitefield wrote John
Wesley urging him to come to Bristol
to take his place.
Whitefield had decided to return to America.
He had heard of Whitefield's preaching, and he
was horrified at such an erratic departure
from tradition.
Wesley sought to determine the will of God
about this invitation, and his way of deciding
the will of God was opening his Bible and then
taking the verse at the top of the page
or the one that his eyes first lighted on.
The result was puzzling.
On his first trial, when he opened up the
Bible, he read, Get thee up into this mountain
and die in the mountain whither Thou goest up,
and be gathered unto thy people.
He decided he'd try again.
What he found was that the children of Israel
wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days.
Well, he tried again.
This time, I'll show him how great things he
will suffer by my namesake.
He tried once more, and devout men carried
Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation
Wesley decided he ought to take the matter to
the Federal Aid Society, but the Society
was unable to reach a decision, and they
decided what they ought to do to find out the will
of the Lord was to cast the law.
Well, the law was favorable for his departure,
for his going to Bristol, but Wesley decided
he wanted to know from the Lord what the result
was going to be of this journey.
And so again he turned to the Scriptures, but
when he opened the book, what he read
was, now there was long war between the house
of Saul and the house of David, but David
waxed stronger and stronger, and the house of
Saul waxed weaker and weaker.
He tried again.
When wicked men have slain a righteous person
in his own house upon his bed, shall I not
require his blood of your hand to take you away
from the earth?
He tried once more, and Ahaz slept with his
father, and was buried with his father in
the city of David.
So without a satisfactory answer, Wesley set
out for Bristol, leaving Charles to take care
of the societies in London.
In Bristol, Wesley was both shocked and amazed
as he listened with Phil and watched the largest
crowds he'd ever seen.
He found it hard to reconcile himself to this
strange way of Phil preaching.
On March 31st, he wrote in his journal, Having
been all my life, till very lately, so tenacious
of every point relating to decency and order,
that I should have thought the saving of souls
almost a sin if it had not been done in church.
Wesley listened to Whitfield and himself
preached in the societies in Bristol.
And it was while expounding the Sermon on the
Mount in one of the societies that he
was struck by the idea.
The Sermon on the Mount was a remarkable
precedent for Phil preaching.
On April 2nd, 1739, John Wesley, in his
clerical garb, stood on a little mound and preached
to the crowd that gathered round him.
He wrote in his journal for that day, At four
in the afternoon I submitted to be more vile,
and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings
of salvation, speaking from a little eminence
in the ground adjoining the city, preaching to
about three thousand people.
Wesley would no longer be a slave to the past.
His mindset would be, how can we best serve the
present age?
Whitfield left the work in Bristol in John
Wesley's hands.
Although Wesley lacked Whitfield's dramatic
power, he proved a very popular and effective
field preacher.
The crowds grew.
He continued to work with the two religious
societies, one that met on Nicholas Street
and the other on Baldwin Street.
In May 1739, he secured a piece of ground in
the horse fair and began a chapel to house
his first really Methodist society.
The title to the Bristol chapel was placed
under eleven trustees.
When they failed to meet the debt, Wesley
called a meeting of the people, canceled the
instrument, and placed the property in his own name.
Preparing for the chapel proved to be a heavy problem.
Captain Foy, the captain of a seagoing ship and
a member of the society, suggested to
Wesley, Let everyone in the society give a
penny a week and it will be easily done.
But the objection was made that some couldn't
afford to give that much.
Captain Foy added, Well, put ten or twelve of
them to me.
Let each of these give what he can weekly and
I'll supply what's wanted.
And some of the others made similar offers.
Wesley's first sojourn in Bristol lasted eleven weeks.
He received word from Charles that there was
trouble in the Federal Aims Society and so
John and Charles exchanged places.
When John returned to London, he found that the
Federal Aims Society was tending to divide
into two groups.
The larger group was made up of Moravians and
their sympathizers, who advocated a quietism,
waiting on the Spirit of God to act within the soul.
They opposed the use of any means of grace
until the Spirit had first spoken to the soul
in pardon and peace.
Everything had to come from the Lord.
No value or emphasis was placed on reading the
scriptures or attending religious societies
or even meditation.
The emphasis was on complete dependence upon God.
The Moravians insisted this honored God.
Wesley saw in it a spiritual retreat and he
emphasized that the search for effective means,
spiritual victory, is what they ought to
concentrate on.
The practice of the Moravians would allow one
to slip farther and farther from religious
experience without realizing it until he'd fall
asleep spiritually.
God knew that he couldn't preach this quietism
to the masses that he'd been preaching to
in Bristol.
Wesley could not accept the Moravian idea of
refraining from all study, participation
in services, all work until a blessing came,
and that the best way to a spiritual blessing
was through stillness.
No, one must use every available means of grace.
Wesley criticized the Moravians for withdrawing
from the world, and he urged that Christians
had to go where the evil was entrenched and
there to challenge the devil.
Wesley tried to bring the true groups together,
but the gap widened in October when Philip
Heinrich Moulter, who had been associated with
Zinzendorf, moved to London and began to assert
in the Federal Aimed Society that anyone who
had doubts that he had true faith should abstain
himself from the sacraments and prayer, waiting
for God to renew his hope.
John Wesley began to open our preaching in and
around London as he worked with the Society.
He preached to vast crowds at Blackheath and
then at Moorfields.
In November 1739, he began to preach at the
Foundry near Moorfields.
The Foundry was a heap of ruins.
It had been the place where the King's cannon
was cast until it was wrecked by an explosion
in 1716.
Wesley purchased the least of the land and
began to repair the building.
Indoor meetings were begun in February at the
Foundry late in November 1739.
On July 23, 1740, Wesley and about 25 men and
48 women withdrew from the Federal Aimed
Society and cast their lot with the Society at
the Foundry.
The Federal Aimed Society became a Moravian church.
Despite all the troubles, friendly relations
continued between the Moravians and the Methodists.
Wesley knew he owed a lot to the Moravians.
Bristol and London continued the centers of
John and Charles Wesley's work.
In Bristol, dividing the members into groups of
about 12 persons proved an effective way
of handling the debt on the chapel.
Each group had a leader who collected the
contributions and turned them over to Wesley.
One leader reported that he found one of the
members in his group drunk.
Another leader reported that a member in his
group was having a quarrel with his wife.
Wesley decided there was more work for these groups.
On February 15, 1742, John Wesley divided the
members of Bristol into what he called
classes, classes of 12, and appointed a leader
for each class.
The class leader was to collect the penny each
week from each member.
But the leaders were also charged to watch over
the spiritual welfare of the members
in the class.
They were put in charge of religious
instruction and correction.
They became the drillmasters of Methodism.
The classes gave an opportunity for emotional expression.
And then smaller groups called bands.
That was the name that was first applied to
those little groups that paid their penny.
But the bands became a special advisory group
to Wesley.
Small groups of the more devoted.
On March 25, 1742, the same system of
organization was introduced into London.
Love feasts were introduced for fellowship and testimony.
In introducing these, the Methodists believed
that they were returning to the practice of
the primitive church.
Also, night watches became a feature of Methodism.
The night watches had first been tried on the
suggestion of a Kingwood coal miner in 1740.
Wesley introduced the giving of society tickets
to those he found worthy of full membership.
The tickets were renewable quarterly, and they
served as a means of keeping check on
the worthiness of the members.
Each member paid a shilling when he renewed his ticket.
Members not eligible for a ticket were kept on
trial until they qualified.
At first, Wesley tried to meet regularly with
each society.
Soon he had to have the societies meet with him
on Thursday.
As the numbers grew, he had the classes meet
with him once a quarter, quarterly meeting
to renew the society tickets.
A hot exchange of letters between John Wesley
and George Whitfield in 1740 and 1741 led
to a temporary break of fellowship between the
two evangelists.
There had been a growing strain of Arminianism
in the Church of England, in which Wesley
was brought up, and he had adopted this outlook.
Whitfield in America had adopted much of the
Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards and the New
England churches.
The clash was over predestination and election
that Whitfield preached.
Wesley felt Whitfield's doctrine was paralyzing
to moral equity.
Wesley believed that the grace of God was
available to every man, and that it could
transform every life that received him.
He preached conscious acceptance with God in
daily growth and holiness.
Every over sin should be the goal of every man,
and he preached for personal conviction
in every man.
They could accept or they could reject.
The breach was largely healed in a very short
time, with Whitfield and his followers continuing
Calvinism, and Wesley and his followers
continuing Arminianism.
The two evangelists supplemented each other in
the great revival, but their movements
were separate movements.
The Countess of Huntington, a wealthy widow who
became a Methodist, became a patron of
Whitfield in 1748.
Whitfield loved to play up to the rich and to
the elite.
Wesley, who had a much better background, loved
to relate to the poor and to the uneducated.
The Countess was very active in evangelizing
her own social class.
Whitfield and associates preached in her
private chapel to many of the elite of England.
She had a private room where those could listen
who wanted to conceal their identity for anyone,
shame for anyone to know that they listened to
a Methodist.
Lord Dartmouth was one of her converts.
The Countess and Lord Dartmouth worked to
secure livings, appointments, for an evangelical
clergyman who favored the revivals,
appointments for them in the Church of England.
Her followers developed into the Calvinistic
Methodist Church.
At first, Wesley believed that all preaching
should be done by ordained men, but he found
very few of the clergy who were sympathetic
with his work.
A lay preacher, Joseph Umphries, as early as
1738, proved very helpful in the societies
as a teacher.
But in 1742, word came to John Wesley when he
was in Bristol that a layman, Thomas Maxfield,
was preaching to the societies in London.
Wesley was upset.
He hurried to London, but he met his mother
before he met Maxfield.
He told his mother, Thomas Maxfield is turned
field preacher, I find.
And his mother replied, John, you know what my
sentiments have been, but take care of
what you do with that young man, for he's as
surely called of God to preach as you are.
Examine what have been the fruits of his preaching.
Hear him also yourself.
Wesley was convinced that his mother was right,
and lay preaching became a regular and recognized
feature of Methodism, but Wesley continued to
believe that only ordained men could administer
the sacraments, baptism, and the Lord's Supper.
As his movement grew, John Wesley carefully
supplied it with a suitable and tight-knit organization.
He came to feel that he had a special talent
from God for organization, and many looked
back on the growth of the Methodist movement,
they would agree that the secret, the great
difference between Wesley and Whitfield was
Wesley's ability to organize.
He was open to suggestions.
He constantly made improvements in the system.
In February 1743, he issued rules to guide the societies.
Societies would be open to anyone who had a
desire to flee from the wrath to come and
desire to be saved from their sins.
Those who were admitted were to give evidence
of that desire for salvation by doing no harm,
by doing good of every possible sort, and by
attending upon all the means of grace.
Each member was expected to contribute a penny
a week and, at the renewal of their quarterly
ticket, to pay a shilling.
The first Wesley took care of the
contributions, turned in by the class leaders,
but he soon
found it necessary to appoint stewards to
receive and dispense the money.
The money was used to pay debts and to relieve
the needy.
The stewards also cared for the property.
Wesley began to appoint teachers for the
schools and another special office, visitors of the
In 1744, the task of visiting all the societies
had become too great, and John Wesley called
the first of the annual conferences a thing to
be a continuing feature of Methodism.
The first conference met in London and was
attended by six clergymen of the Church of
England who had cast their lot with Wesley and
by four lay preachers.
It was devoted to defining such subjects as
repentance, saving faith, justification, sanctification,
free will, witness of the Spirit, and such doctrines.
Wesley provided the answers.
In 1746, after four years of itinerating by the
Wesley's and their lay preachers, John
Wesley found it necessary to divide the fields
of labor into circuits.
They had been so successful and there had been
such remarkable growth.
Traveling preachers were assigned to circuits.
Stationary leaders were assigned to assist
chiefly in one place.
He soon found it necessary to place an
assistant over each circuit.
Wesley found it impossible for him to
personally oversee it all.
The assistant developed into the
superintendent, each superintendent over the circuits.
Wesley felt that lay preachers had little form
of training and that they had preached
all they knew in one year, hence they should
move every year to keep their preaching fresh
and alive.
Wesley very diligently began to provide
suitable publications.
He wanted his preachers to read, he wanted them
to develop intellectuals.
He tried in vain to secure ordination from
these lay preachers from the Church of England.
He couldn't move the Church.
In the early years of his ministry, especially
around Bristol and London, John Wesley's
preaching was often accompanied by strange
outbursts of emotion, physical contortions
of all sorts, periods of apparent Catalepsy.
People fell out cold or they stared unmovable.
Please run this cassette fast forward to the
end and turn it over for side two.
John Wesley tended to take these emotional
demonstrations as the work of supernatural power.
Sometimes it was the Lord working for salvation.
Sometimes it was the devil trying to destroy
the work.
John met the demonstrations with prayer and he
testified that he saw lives changed.
John did not put great emphasis on the strange
accompaniments and they gradually ceased.
Once when Charles Wesley was preaching, there
was a strange outburst of emotion that drowned
out his preaching.
He announced that the next time someone broke
out in an uncontrollable impulse, he'd have
them removed from the audience.
His audiences remained quiet.
Up until 1742, the Westlers' work was chiefly
confined to London and Bristol, their surrounding
areas and the villages between the two.
In 1742, John Wesley rode horseback to
Newcastle in the time of the North, rode there
for the
first time.
Newcastle was the greatest of the northern
cities of England and the center of the great
coal industry.
He was shocked at the swearing of both children
and adults on the streets.
On Sunday morning with a single friend, he went
to the center of the worst quarter of
the city.
He chose for his text one appropriate, he felt,
for those who'd been bruised in life.
The text was, he was wounded for our
transgressions, he was bruised for our nickels,
the chastisement
of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes
we were healed.
But the time he'd finished his sermon, the
crowd had swelled of more than 1,200.
The crowd was open-mouthed at the little man in
his clerical robes.
He announced at the conclusion of the sermon,
my name's John Wesley, I'll be here again
this evening and I'll preach again in this place.
And that evening the crowd was larger than any
he'd ever seen in London or in Bristol.
His preaching warmed the hearts of people not
accustomed to Sermon.
The revival had begun in the north of England,
spread through Northumberland, Durham, North
Yorkshire, changing miners and human beings.
Societies were established in Bristol, West
Riding, Somerset, Wilkes, Gloucestershire,
Laster, Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire, and over
South Yorkshire.
On the way home, he preached in the churchyard
at Epworth.
In the summer of 1742, Charles Wesley preached
in Weddesbury and Leeds and Newcastle.
The next year he took Cornwall the storm.
Charles took his full share of itinerating for
his marriage in 1749.
After that he confined himself chiefly to
Bristol where family obligations kept him busy.
He preached and wrote hymns and looked after
the societies.
In 1771 he moved to London where he spent the
rest of his life preaching, caring for
the societies, entertaining important visitors,
and writing hymns.
For over 50 years, John Wesley was a flaming
soul riding back and forth over England, preaching
to crowds in the city, along the roadways, in
ends, in the fields.
He averaged over 5,000 miles a year for 50 years.
It's been estimated that he traveled over
250,000 miles on land at a time when there
were no turnpacks in the northern part of England.
Often he rode 60 or 70 miles a day, preached at
least three times.
On a usual day he was up at four, he preached
at five, by six he was in the saddle.
He read as he rode, until he was 70 he traveled
on horseback.
After 70, often traveled in a special carriage,
a coach.
It had one side boarded up, furnished then with
bookcases and books, and a writing table
where he could work as he traveled.
Through all the years he rode in rain, sleet,
and snow, often writhing cold, covered with
ice, but the weather didn't stop him.
He made some 60 tours of Ireland, some 40 tours
of Scotland.
In the 50 years he preached 42,000 sermons,
averaging 15 a week.
Not exaggerated, because every day he wrote
down in the journal what he did, to count them.
After he was 70 he preached to 30,000 in a
natural amphitheater, in that pit in Cornwall.
At 83 he wrote, I've entered the 83rd year of
my age.
I'm a wonder to myself.
I'm never tired.
Either with preaching or writing or traveling,
and he was a wonder.
A memorable day for John Wesley was the day
after Easter in April 1745.
He was in Newcastle again, up at Ford.
He preached at Half Past Ford.
He mounted and started for London.
At eight he preached while he let his horse rest.
He reached North Allerton in the early evening.
He preached in the inn.
A Roman Catholic priest, Watson Adams, who'd
heard him in Newcastle, had brought some friends
and neighbors to hear him preach at the inn.
One of the friends was Elizabeth Tyman of
Quakerist, whose son later would write a famous
biography of Wesley.
Father Adams begged Wesley to preach in his
house at Osmoly.
Wesley had his tired horse brought from the stall.
His party reached Osmoly a little before ten.
The priest and his friends went from house to
house, pounding on the doors of the villagers
who'd been in bed for hours.
In an hour the chapel was filled.
Wesley preached.
It was after midnight when he went to bed.
He traveled 60 miles, preached four times.
He wrote in his journal, felt no weirdness at all.
At five the next morning he preached to a full
chapel on justification by faith.
Many had arrived at the chapel before Wesley.
Some had stayed in the chapel all night, for
fear they might oversleep and miss the Sermon.
As Wesley started for his horse after the
Sermon, his way was blocked by the Quakerist,
Elizabeth Tyman.
She asked, Does thou think water baptism on
ordinance of Christ?
Wesley replied, What says Peter?
Who can forbid water that these should not be
baptized who've received the Holy Ghost
this week?
The woman cried, Tis right, tis right, I'll be baptized.
Wesley took her into the house and baptized her.
Daylight he mounted, rode on toward London, but
he was leaving the Methodist Society in Osmoly.
And you've got to remember, he believed the
ordinances could only be performed, administered
by the ordained.
That's why they didn't have great emphasis on
baptism because very few of them were ordained.
And you see already, though, the Church of
England granted and stated that the ancient
baptism was by immersion.
They thought sprinkling was all right, and
Wesley inherited that from the Church of England.
Wesley again rushed to Newcastle when he
learned that Prince Charles was threatening Newcastle,
the prince had landed in Scotland, and the
clans had risen in support of him.
After two preliminary scourges in which the
prince was victorious, he started marching
toward London.
The troops of the House of Hanover were
concentrated in Newcastle when Wesley got the
news that
he rushed there.
The Hanoverian forces were defeated at Preston
Pass, and Newcastle was filled with panic,
and the well-to-do fled with all the personal
belongings they could carry.
Prince Maurice of Nassau arrived with the
German and English soldiers.
Wesley was shocked at the moral conditions of
the camp.
He went to the mayor and suggested to him that
he be allowed to preach a series of sermons
to the soldiers.
The mayor passed the message to the commanding general.
Five days later, Wesley was allowed to preach
to the troops, but it was a failure.
Wesley declared that his chaste speech did not
move these hardened troops.
They were so hardened by the hard language of
their officers.
But on Sunday, he preached to a crowd in an
open place in the city.
The sermon was, There is no difference, for all
have sinned and come short of the glory
of God.
He noticed out on the edge of the large crowd a
group of homesick German soldiers.
They didn't understand English, but they'd been
attracted by the commotion in the town.
Wesley saw them, and Wesley preached to them in German.
In his early years, John Wesley faced bitter
opposition from both high and low.
Mobs often threatened his life and the lives of
his followers.
Charles Wesley declared that one could identify
Methodist houses by the marks of violence
on them.
Some of the clergy of England actually
encouraged the mobs to break up the Methodist meetings.
Routies brought bulls from the rings where they
indulged in bull baiting, and the bulls
were driven through the crowds who were trying
to listen to Wesley.
Drummers were hired to drown out the sermons.
Stones, vegetables, and filth were showered on
the preachers and on their audiences.
Bullies were hired to beat up the preachers.
Press gangs seized the lay preachers and forced
them into the army and Navy, some of them
gone for their homes for a long time.
Houses were looted and destroyed.
In Dawson, women were knocked down, abused in
unmentionable manners, dragged off in rape,
and their children left to wander in the
streets with no one daring to give them shelter.
John Wesley's rule was, always look the mob in
the face.
Often he was wounded by stones thrown from a
distance or blows delivered from behind.
Seldom was there violence when he could look a
man in the eye.
Wesley never carried a weapon, didn't lift up
his hand in self-defense.
His barrier and the flesh of his eyes was his defense.
At Walts Hall in Stratfordshire, John Wesley
was seized by a mob one night and dragged
to the house of the Justice Percy House.
Percy House refused to act on the plea that he
was already in bed.
He left Wesley to the mob in the night.
One brute struck him from behind with an oak club.
Another started to hit him, but stopped and
began to stroke and to make fun of his long,
soft hair.
Missiles hit him and brought blood.
He was pushed along through the street by the
howling mob.
Wesley cried out to him, Are you willing to
hear me speak?
No, no, the crowd answered.
And one shouted, Knock his brains out, knock
him down, kill him at once.
Wesley began to pray.
The leader of the mob heard him pray and came
up to him, Sir, I'll spend my life for you.
Follow me and no one shall harm a hair of your head.
He was a prize fighter and with three or four
of his comrades, he took Wesley to safety.
Later that ruffian prize fighter became one of
Wesley's lay preachers.
The justices of the peace in Straffordshire
issued a proclamation to all the constables
of the district to diligently search out any
Methodist preachers and bring them to the court.
They accused the Methodists of causing riots
and disturbing the peace of the king.
In the end, the bitter persecution convinced
many of the courage and the sincerity of Wesley
that the movement grew.
Long before his death, the persecution ceased
and honors were showered upon him.
But the persecution of his followers did not
completely cease until after his death.
The bitter persecution in Straffordshire
produced two leaders of American Methodism, Francis
Raspberry and Richard Watko.
Both were converted as young men when they
heard Wesley preach.
The Duchess of Buckingham, the illegitimate
daughter of King James II, expressed the attitude
of many of the nobility toward Methodists.
When the Countess of Huntington invited the
Duchess to hear Whitfield, she replied, I
thank your ladyship for the information
concerning the Methodist preaching.
Their doctrines are most repulsive and strongly
tinctured with impertinence and disrespect
toward their superiors, in perpetually
endeavoring to level all ranks and to do away
with all distinction.
And it's monstrous to be told that you have a
heart as sinful as the common wretches that
crawl on the earth.
This is highly offensive and insulting.
John Wesley published 150 of his sermons, and
they were widely read.
He cared little for fine writing or style.
Both his oral and written sermons were
characterized by plainness and directness.
There was little pathos or humor, little of illustration.
Since he accepted the doctrines of the
established church, his sermons were not
doctrinal except
as the doctrine bore on why.
He didn't deal in puzzles or find points of dispute.
His preaching was aimed at the lowly, to bring
them to salvation and to Christian living.
Wesley was always very neat and dressed, unless
soaked by the rain or the snow in his travel.
Only 5 feet, 6 inches tall, weighing £120, but
he could face the angriest
mob with complete self-control.
In 1748, when John Wesley was 45 years of age,
he thought again of marriage.
In Newcastle, he met a sailor's widow, Grace
Murray, who was engaged in the work of the
societies there.
Wesley fell ill in Newcastle, and she had
nursed him through the oldest.
Since leaving Georgia, he had shown no signs of
romantic interest in any woman, but he
became convinced that he might lawfully marry,
in spite of what Paul had written about the
disadvantages of the married state for a preacher.
After his recovery, one day he remarked to
Grace Murray,
If I ever marry, I think you will be the person.
A little later, Wesley spoke more directly, and
she replied,
This is too great a blessing for me.
I can't tell how to believe it.
This is all I could have wished for under
Heaven, if I dared wish for it.
Wesley thought they were engaged.
Wesley took her with him to visit the societies
in Yorkshire and Derbyshire.
And then he left her, Cheshire, with one of his
preachers, John Bennett, while he went
off on another preaching tour.
A year earlier, Grace had nursed John Bennett
to a serious illness.
Soon Wesley received notes from both Bennett
and Grace, asking Wesley's permission for
them to marry.
Wesley was shocked, but he pulled himself
together and sent a mild answer, assuming
that they were already married.
Grace passed a distressful weather, unable to
choose between the two.
Wesley didn't press his case, and so she
finally married Bennett.
In 1751, Wesley met and married Mary Vizell,
widow of a London merchant.
It didn't prove a happy marriage.
John Wesley preached on Sunday, before he was
married on Monday.
He preached on Tuesday, the day after the marriage.
Two weeks later, he set out for Bristol,
leaving his wife behind.
He returned to London for a few days, and then
set out for the north, leaving her behind.
When he took her with him, she didn't like
traveling and was always complaining.
And she was always complaining when he came
home because she didn't like being left alone.
She was jealous of his correspondence with the
lady converts.
Then once she accused him of adultery, he
declared, you've wronged me, but not beyond forgiveness.
But finally, in 1771, she left him.
He declared, I didn't leave her, I didn't send
her away, I shall not call her back.
She died October the 8th, 1781, and he didn't
learn about her death until after she was buried.
John Wesley let nothing interfere with his work.
Charles Wesley did his share of the itinerating
and preaching, but his greatest contribution
to Methodism was his hymns.
He wrote 6,500 hymns.
He provided the hymns for every human need and
occasion, night watches, Lord's Supper,
Christmas, Easter, Ascension, Trinity,
Thanksgiving, New Year's Day, funerals,
troubles, persecution.
His hymns for the use of families contained
hymns for almost any occasion.
For safe delivery, for sickness, for going to
work, weddings, morning hymns, evening
hymns, sleep hymns, sorrow hymns, child leaving
home, conversion, family troubles and fusses.
And his last book was One for Criminals,
Condemned to Death.
And he penned a note on one of his manuscripts
that this was one of the most successful because
18 of them had died in peace with that hymn book.
For many years, John and Charles published a
collection of hymns annually.
They began to gather them up into larger collections.
John was the editor, his standards were high.
He ruled out unworthy hymns, not only of his
brother but other Methodist writers.
He wanted the movement to have dignified music
and he was set against anything, any cheap
or vulgar verses.
John Wesley himself translated 24 Moravian and
German hymns and added them to their hymn
collection and many thought they were some of
the best.
Since the Methodists formed societies which
were not considered churches, hymn singing
was allowed.
Churches sang only chants and mythical versions
of the songs.
With Charles hymns, England sang itself into a
great revival.
Some insisted that Charles hymns did more for
that revival than John's preaching.
Hired houses were not the only sign of a
Methodist house.
Another sign of identification was the singing.
Some thought the Methodists sang too much.
But the hymns carried the Methodist message in
a form easily understood and not easily forgotten.
The Wesley's felt sure that a society that
didn't sing had problems, needed to be investigated,
and they'd start an investigation.
John declared, Sour Godliness is the devil's religion.
There was still lots of the pure earth and
darkness in England.
Dear old Professor Howard, Harvard, kind of
senior statesman of the Unitarian, Dutch humanist
Unitarian, with a great deal of feeling, would
say the secret of the German Reformation that
Luther had the Germans sing themselves into
reform, that music had never been done justice,
that the music did as much as Luther's writing
and preaching.
And then he would come to Charles Wesley and
he'd ask the class, how many of you have ever
read one of John Wesley's sermons?
Who reads one of John Wesley's sermons?
But he said all over this world, churches sing
Charles Wesley's hymns.
And he said, boys, you're going to be tempted
when you get out in the church.
A great preacher's coming to preach.
And someone may suggest it to it, or you may be
tempted, let's cut out one of the songs
to give the preacher more time.
He'd say, boys, don't make that mistake.
Put in an extra song and let the preacher cut
the sermon if necessary, for the songs
will increase the power of the preaching.
Next time we'll talk about the methods in America.