Mr. Wesley was a most pertinacious adherent of the English
Establishment, and never dreamed of attempting the salvation of souls by
preaching the Gospel outside of her church walls until he was ruthlessly
expelled from all her pulpits. But he had firmly resolved that neither
bishops, nor curates, nor church wardens should stand between him and
duty. But what to do and where to go he did not know. Every door seemed
closed against him, and almost every face save the face of God frowned
upon him. But while God smiled he knew no fear. In his extremity he took
counsel of Whitefield, resulting in a firm purpose to do the work to
which Providence seemed to have clearly called them. Churches were
closed, to be sure, but the unsaved and perishing were everywhere except
in the churches, and to reach and to save them they betook themselves to
the wide, wide world. They were now seen in hospitals, administering
spiritual comfort to the sick; in prisons, offering eternal life to
condemned felons; at Kingswood, calling the dark colliers to a knowledge
of the truth. In these places unfrequented by sacerdotal robes the
Gospel of the grace of God was carried by these unhonored servants of
Jesus. But soon prisons and hospitals were denied them, and then they
fled to the fields and to the streets of the cities, choosing for their
pulpits the market-house steps, a horse-block, a coal heap, a table, a
stone wall, a mountain side, a horse's back, etc.
The colliers of Kingswood had no church, no Sabbath, no Gospel. They
were the most corrupt, degraded, blasphemous class to be found in
England. Southey describes them as "lawless, brutal, and worse than
heathen." They seemed to have been forsaken of God and man. This was a
fit place to test the power of "the Gospel of the grace of God." The
intrepid Whitefield was the first to break the ice. "Pulpits are
denied," he says, "and the poor colliers are ready to perish." So he
unfurled the Gospel banner "with a mountain for his pulpit," he says,
"and the broad heavens for a sounding-board."
The Wesleys are lifting up their voices like trumpets in all parts of
the kingdom. They are threading their way along the mountains of Wales,
where the people know as little of Christianity as do the wild Indians
of our Western plains. They are seen in Ireland, in all her towns and
cities, calling her papal-cursed sons to a knowledge of Jesus. Again
their voices are heard amid the hills and vales of Scotland, urging her
stern clans to accept Jesus by faith alone. Then they are surrounded by
tens of thousands of besmeared miners who are weeping for sin and
rejoicing in deliverance from it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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