Such were Wesley’s moralisings on the Weardale revival, in 1772, in which less than a hundred people were converted, and concerning which he says: “upon the whole, we may affirm, such a work of God as this has not been seen before in the three kingdoms.” If this was so, who will say that the former times were better than these? How many thousands of aged Methodists can easily call to mind far more remarkable revivals of the work of God than even that in Weardale! And, further, how was it that, at Wesley’s visit two years after, the results of this revival were almost reduced to nothing, except that, in consequence of the backslidings, “the preachers were discouraged; and jealousies, heart burnings, and evil surmisings, were multiplied more and more”? Wesley returned from Weardale to Newcastle on the 5th of June, and here, and in the immediate neighbourhood, he spent the next ten days. In the Newcastle society, there were fewer members than he had found two years before. “This,” says he, “I can impute to nothing but the want of visiting from house to house; without which the people will hardly increase, either in number or grace.” This was a sharp thrust at some of the most distinguished preachers of the day, namely, Peter Jaco, Joseph Cownley, Thomas Hanby, Matthew Lowes, Thomas Tennant, William Thompson, and Thomas Simpson, all of them appointed to Newcastle at this period. On June 15, Wesley left Newcastle, and spent the next week in preaching at Durham, Stockton, Yarm, Thirsk, Osmotherley, Hutton Rudby, Stokesley, Castleton, Whitby, Robinhood’s Bay, and Scarborough. This was pretty well, for a man afflicted as Wesley was, and at the age of seventy. Eighteen months before this, his termagant wife had abruptly left him, and gone to her house at Newcastle. Now that his health was so endangered, she was returning with him, whether to his comfort or otherwise we are not informed; but, at all events, she had in Wesley’s chaise the undeserved luxury of a summer’s ride through the most beautiful scenes of Yorkshire.[167]