The sunlight was in his room when he awoke. He had a sense of
refreshment. A weight seemed lifted off his heart. He remembered how
he had awakened the previous morning in the same bed with a feeling of
perplexity. He had found it impossible to make up his mind as to the
course he should pursue in regard to Pritchard. He had been fearful of
being led to rebuke a man who might have been made the means of leading
even one sinner to repentance. He asked himself if he differed as much
from that man as the average churchman did from himself in his methods.
He knew how grievous he regarded the rebukes which he had received from
excellent clergymen who looked on his field preaching with the sternest
disapproval; and who then was he that he should presume to rebuke a man
who had been led by his zeal beyond what he, Wesley, thought to be the
bounds of propriety?
He had felt great perplexity on awakening on that Sunday morning; but he
had been given help to see his way clearly on that morning of mist, and
now he felt greatly at ease. He had nothing to reproach himself with.
He recalled all the events of the day before--all that his eyes had
seen--all that his ears had heard; and now that he had no further need
to think about Pritchard, it was surprising how much he had to recall
that had little to do with that man. He himself felt somewhat surprised
that above all that had been said to him during the day the words that
he should dwell longest upon were a few words that had fallen from Mr.
Hartwell. He had hinted to Mr. Hartwell that John Bennet had acted so
grossly in regard to him, through a mad jealousy; and Mr. Hartwell,
hearing this, had lifted up his hands in amazement, and said:
“Absurdity could go no further!”
When Hartwell said those words Wesley had not quite grasped their full
import; his attention had been too fully occupied with the further
extravagance which he had witnessed on the part of Pritchard. But now
that his mind was at ease he recalled the words, and he had sufficient
selfpossession to ask himself if his host considered that the absurdity
was to be found in Bennet's fancying that he, Wesley, was his rival. If
so, was the absurdity to be found in the fancy that such a young woman
could think of him, Wesley, in the light of a lover; or that he should
think of the young woman as a possible wife?
He could not deny that the thought of Nelly Polwhele as his constant
companion had more than once come to him when he was oppressed with a
sense of his loneliness; and he knew that when he had got Mr. Hartwell's
letter calling him back to Porthawn he had felt that it might be that
there was what some men called Fate, but what he preferred to call
the Hand of God, in this matter. Was he being led back to have an
opportunity of seeing her again, and of learning truly if the regard
which he thought he felt for her was to become the love that sanctified
the marriage of a man with a woman?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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