to rather a tame conclusion in his being dismissed by the Deacon, who
paid him his salary and told him that his services would be no further
required.
However, his work was only apparently ended. Soon afterwards he received
a call to Mayfield, with occasional returns to Frittenden and Smarden,
and finally he detached himself altogether from Kent and became a
regular preacher at Burwash, whither followed him the loyal part of his
congregation at Shovers Green. The story of his life at Burwash is his
usual mixture of good works and bad debts; however, his circumstances
both spiritual and material, seem to have grown more stable. His
ministry was becoming famous among the farms, and in 1842 a friend at
Robertsbridge offered to “give me a house to turn into a chapel, with a
lease of fifty years and ten pounds per annum towards the support of the
cause. This gave me fresh reasons for prayer.” The offer was accepted,
and the foundation stone was laid in November 1842, the opening taking
place in January of the next year. Preachers came respectively from
London and the Upper Dicker, and “were much favoured in their own souls;
but as for myself, I was sorely tried the whole of the day with my own
debts and those of the chapel.”
So ends the story of the “Wonders of Free Grace.” Weller did not long
enjoy his more established existence, for he died five years after
coming to Robertsbridge. But his Bethel and his book remain, both akin
in their ugliness and humility. One reads the book with much the same
feelings as one looks at the Bethel. It is written entirely without
art—a wordy stammering narrative, mixed with minute reports of dreams,
spiritual experiences, marvellous conversions, digests of sermons and
Calvinistic arguments. It is all obscure, voluble, earnest and naive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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