How singular was his visit to Epworth, where he found the church of his childhood, his father’s church, the church of his own first ministrations, closed against him! The minister of the church was a drunkard; he had been under great obligations, both to Wesley himself and to the Wesley family, but he assailed him with the most offensive brutality; and when Wesley, denied the pulpit, signified his intention of simply partaking of the Lord’s Supper with the parishioners on the following Sunday, the coarse man sent word, “Tell Mr. Wesley I shall not give him the Sacrament, for he is not _fit_.” It seems to have cut Mr. Wesley very deeply. “It was fit,” he says, “that he who repelled me from the table where I had myself so often distributed the bread of life, should be one who owed his all in this world to the tender love my father had shown to his, as well as personally to himself.” He stayed there, however, eight days, and preached every evening in the churchyard, standing on his father’s tomb; truly a singular sight, the living son, the prophet of his age, surely little short of inspired, preaching from his dead father’s grave with such pathos and power as we may well conceive. “I am well assured,” he says, “I did far more good to my old Lincolnshire parishioners by preaching three days on my father’s tomb than I did by preaching three years in his pulpit!” [Illustration: WESLEY PREACHING IN EPWORTH CHURCHYARD. ] As he travelled to and fro, odd mistakes sometimes happened. Arrived at York, he went into the church in St. Saviour’s Gate; the rector, one Mr. Cordeau, had often warned his congregation against going to hear “that vagabond Wesley” preach. It was usual in that day for ministers of the Establishment to wear the cassock or gown, just as everywhere in France we see the French abbés. Wesley had on his gown, like a university man in a university town. Mr. Cordeau, not knowing who he was, offered him his pulpit; Wesley was quite willing, and always ready. Sermons leaped impromptu from his lips, and this sermon was an impressive one; at its close the clerk asked the rector if he knew who the preacher was. “No.” “Why, sir, it was that vagabond Wesley!” “Ah, indeed!” said the astonished clergyman; “well, never mind, we have had a good sermon.” The anecdotes of the incidents which waited upon the preacher in his travels are of every order of humorous, affecting, and romantic interest; they are spread over a large variety of volumes, and even still need to be gathered, framed, and hung in the light of some effective chronicle. [Illustration: EPWORTH CHURCH. ]