Samuel was not amused by the strange ramblings of his younger brother and wrote a sharp letter to John. “If you have not been a Christian ever since I knew you, you have been a great hypocrite, for you made us believe that you were one.”
John soon found that his new theological position of being saved by faith offended many other people as well. He was banned from preaching at churches in and around London, and his friends were insulted by their conversations with him. Less than a month after his experience at Aldersgate, John felt under attack. He needed to go somewhere to sort out his feelings and decide what to do next. He soon settled on a destination: Herrnhut, in Saxony, the home of Count Zinzendorf and the Moravians.
On June 7, 1738, John visited his mother, who was now living with Anne in Salisbury. He explained to Susanna what had happened to him and how he intended to go to Germany, and then he asked for her blessing. But Susanna refused to give her son the blessing he sought. Instead she told John that she thought his new views were “extravagant and enthusiastic.”
John set out for Saxony anyway, accompanied by his faithful friend Benjamin Ingham. After eight weeks of grueling travel, John and Benjamin reached the Moravian community in Marienborn, where John had learned that Count Zinzendorf was staying. John was so ill by the time he arrived that he managed only a brief conversation with the count. Although he felt under the weather, John was most impressed with the little he saw of the Moravian community. In his journal he wrote,
The family at Marienborn consists of about ninety persons, gathered out of many nations. They live for the present in a large house hired by the Count, which is capable of receiving a far greater number; but are building one about three English miles off, on the top of a fruitful hill. “O how pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!”
The following day John was feeling better, and he accompanied Count Zinzendorf on a short trip to visit a friend. John enjoyed observing the German customs and the people’s interaction with one another at dinnertime.
At Marienborn John worked in the community garden and spent time talking with many of the Moravians. He found their message and their manners appealing, as he recorded in his journal.
I lodged with one of the brethren at Eckershausen, an English mile from Marienborn, where I usually spent the day, chiefly in conversing with those who could speak either Latin or English; not being able, for want of more practice, to speak German readily. And here I continually met with what I sought for, [namely], living proofs of the power of faith: Persons saved from inward as well as outward sin, by “the love of God shed abroad in their hearts”; and from all doubt and fear, by the abiding witness of “the Holy Ghost given unto them.”
On Sunday, August 6, John was at Herrnhut, where he joined in the religious services of the Moravian community there. He found the services refreshingly different.
After the Evening Service at Herrnhut was ended, all the unmarried men (as is their custom) walked quite around the town, singing praise with instruments of music; and then on a small hill, at a little distance from it, casting themselves into a ring, joined in prayer. Then they returned into the great Square, and, a little after eleven, commended each other to God.
John also attended the funeral service for a young Moravian boy and was once again struck with the simple faith he encountered.
A child was buried. The burying-ground (called by them Gottes Acker, that is God’s ground) lies a few hundred yards out of the town, under the side of a little wood. There are distinct Squares in it for married men and unmarried; for married and unmarried women; for male and female children, and for widows. The corpse was carried from the chapel.… They all sang as they went. Being come into the Square where the male children are buried, the men stood on two sides of it, the boys on the third, and the women and girls on the fourth. There they sang again: After which the Minister used (I think read) a short prayer and concluded with that blessing, “Unto God’s gracious mercy and protection I commit you.”
Seeing the [child’s] father (a plain man, a tailor by trade) looking at the grave, I asked, “How do you find yourself?” He said, “Praised be the Lord, never better. He has taken the soul of my child to himself. I have seen, according to my desire, his body committed to holy ground. And I know that when it is raised again, both he and I shall be ever with the Lord.”
All of these things impressed John, and John freely wrote about them. But other things disturbed him. One of these was the fact that Count Zinzendorf did not agree with Peter Böhler regarding the matter of being saved by faith. And because John still seemed to have many questions about his faith, the Moravians decided they would not allow him to share Communion with them, lest he “ate and drank damnation upon himself.” This insulted John, especially since they welcomed his friend Benjamin to the Communion table.
John tried to look on the bright side of things, and he spent some time visiting various Moravian communities. When it was time for him to leave Saxony and return to England, John wrote, “I would gladly have spent my life here but my master [is] calling me to labour in another part of his vineyard.… Oh when shall THIS Christianity cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.”
For the next several months John preached wherever he was allowed to. His main sermon was “By grace you are saved through faith.” This was not a popular message. John was seldom welcome to preach twice in a church, and the Church of England authorities were particularly worried by the “strange enthusiasms” that gripped some of those who heard his sermons.
For his part, John welcomed the idea that God talked to His people in many different ways. He saw nothing wrong with spiritual dreams, visions, and supernatural voices. He took it in stride when, while preaching at St. Thomas’s Workhouse, a young woman began crying out. She writhed around “raving mad, screaming and tormenting herself,” as John described it. John stopped preaching and prayed for the woman, who immediately quieted down, causing many in the congregation to be moved to tears.
By the end of the year, John was allowed to preach in only three or four Church of England pulpits. As a result, he was unsure of how to proceed. Regardless, the Methodists looked to him as their founder and unofficial leader, since the handful of small societies that had sprung up were direct descendants of the Holy Club in Oxford. John decided to spend New Year’s Eve 1738–39 with a group of Methodists who met in Fetter Lane. The group planned a dinner of bread and water and an all-night prayer service. Seven members of the old Holy Club were present for the event, including George Whitefield, Charles Wesley, Benjamin Ingham, and John’s brother-in-law, Westley Hall. About sixty other fervent Christians also were in attendance.
Later John described the event. “About three in the morning, as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground. As soon as we were recovered a little from that awe and amazement at the presence of His majesty, we broke out with one voice, ‘We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord!’”
It was George Whitefield and not John Wesley, however, who grasped the full spiritual significance of the night of prayer. The following day George wrote of the event, “We continued in fasting and prayer till three o’clock, and then parted with the conviction that God was to do great things among us.”
It would be another three months before John would begin to experience what George had foretold.
Chapter 10
The World His Parish
As 1739 unfolded, doors continued to slam shut for John Wesley, as did they also for George Whitefield, who had turned out to be a fiery preacher himself. Finally, several members from the Methodist group at Fetter Lane suggested that George travel to Bristol and see whether there were any preaching opportunities there. Unfortunately, George’s reputation as a fiery preacher had preceded him, and minister after minister in Bristol refused to have him in the pulpit to speak to their congregations.
Frustrated but not beaten by the situation, George declared, “I thought it might be doing the service of my Creator, who had a mountain for his pulpit and the heavens for his sounding board; and who, when his Gospel was refused by the Jews, sent His servants into the highways and hedges.” So to the highways and hedges—or, more precisely, to the coalfields at Kingswood on the outskirts of Bristol—George went.
Kingswood was a spiritual no-man’s-land in more ways than one. Since the Church of England was the official, state-sanctioned church, any new parishes had to be created by an act of Parliament. But the mining industry had sprung up quickly in response to England’s growing industrialization, and no Anglican churches had been established in the area for the colliers (coal miners) to attend, not that they would have gone to such a church anyway. The miners were a crude and uneducated group who mocked any attempt to convert them to Christianity, that is, until George Whitefield arrived with his hard-hitting preaching style. The colliers and their families flocked to hear George speak in open-air meetings. Sometimes as many as twenty thousand people gathered to hear him preach!
John first heard of the events in Kingswood in a letter from George. The letter, written on March 3, 1739, described a “glorious door opened among the colliers of Kingswood.” As he closed his letter, George invited John to “come and water what God has enabled me to plant.”
A second letter from George, three weeks later, was more direct. “If the brethren [the Methodists at Fetter Lane], after prayer for direction, think it proper, prepare to arrive in Bristol at the latter end of the next week.”
John was shocked when he read this second letter. George was seriously suggesting that he come to Bristol, preach in the open air, and train illiterate colliers in the way of the gospel. John did not want to go, and his brother Charles was even more opposed to the whole idea.
Still, the brothers decided that they should seek guidance from God as to what to do. Following the Moravian tradition, John prayed, opened his Bible, and pointed to a verse, which read, “With one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes. Yet do not lament or weep or shed any tears.” Neither John nor Charles could say exactly what that meant, so they took the matter to the Fetter Lane Society. The members of the group suggested that John draw lots to settle the matter. John agreed, and he drew a slip of paper from a hat. The word written on the slip said, “Go,” and without further questioning, John set out for Bristol.
When John arrived at his destination, conditions were worse than he had feared. By now George was preaching on a bowling green, and thousands of people were clamoring to hear him, climbing trees and sitting on rooftops for a better view. John shuddered at the thought of having to take part in such an unruly scene.
George was glad to see John and announced that he had decided to head for the Georgia colony. The next day he handed his preaching responsibilities over to John and set out on a final trip to London before setting sail for North America.
John shook his head in disbelief at the turn of events. He insisted that he could not preach outdoors. Instead he began preaching indoors to the small groups of Methodists who had rapidly sprung up in and around Bristol as a result of George’s preaching. It was not long, however, before the Methodist meeting rooms were overflowing with people, and when the floor in one meeting place collapsed under the weight, John gave in and decided to preach outdoors.
Monday, April 2, was a day John Wesley would never forget. At three-thirty in the afternoon, John trudged over the slag heaps to the brickyard where he had agreed to preach. His stomach was in knots, and he tried not to think about what he, an ordained Anglican minister, was about to do. Although it was not illegal for him to preach outdoors, it was highly irregular and was frowned upon by the church authorities. John took a deep breath and prayed silently as a crowd of colliers who had just finished work for the day milled around him.
