“I shall not write anything to you concerning receiving the blessed sacrament till towards spring; though I hope you frequently think of it and long for it, as the dearest pledge of your Saviour’s love, especially when you go home from church and see others stay to receive it. “And thus much, at present, of public worship.—I am, your affectionate friend and father, “SAMUEL WESLEY.”[187] ----- Footnote 187: _Methodist Magazine_, 1846, p. 53. ----- Before proceeding to give further extracts from Mr Wesley’s letters, there are two facts in the foregoing which demand attention. The first is, that the rector was a passionate admirer of sacred music. Of this there can be no doubt. In one of his articles, in the _Athenian Oracle_, (vol. i. p. 393,) be strongly advocates the duty of singing psalms in private families, and attributes the neglect of this to the general decay of piety, though he admits that the faultiness of the metrical versions of the psalms, and the ill choice of tunes, may have had some influence in leading to such neglect. In another article, in the same volume, (p. 440,) he says—“Nothing but a stock is proof against the charms of music, and especially when good sense, good poetry, good tunes, and a good voice meet together.” In another article on the same subject, in vol. iii. p. 95, he strongly complains of Sternhold’s version, and adds, in reference to the tunes, that most of them are so vile that even Orpheus himself could not make good music out of them. “This, and the reading them at such a lame rate, tearing them limb from limb, and leaving sense, cadency, and all at the mercy of the clerk’s nose, may be part of the reason why the Reformed Churches are yet most remiss in psalmody.” Is it too much to say that the marvellous musical genius of his two grandsons, Charles and Samuel Wesley, was inherited from himself? So remarkable was this talent for music that Charles surprised his father, by playing, with correctness, a tune on the harpsichord before he was three years old; while Samuel taught himself to read from Handel’s oratorios; had all the airs, recitations, and choruses of “Samson” and the “Messiah,” both words and notes, by heart before he was six years old; and, when he was eight, composed and wrote his own oratorio of “Ruth.”