xt76hd7npg16 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt76hd7npg16/data/mets.xml Tipple, Ezra Squier, 1861-1936. 1916  books b92-65-27081279 English Methodist Book Concern, : New York : Cincinnati : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Asbury, Francis, 1745-1816. Francis Asbury  : the prophet of the long road / by Ezra Squier Tipple. text Francis Asbury  : the prophet of the long road / by Ezra Squier Tipple. 1916 2002 true xt76hd7npg16 section xt76hd7npg16 


























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          FRANCIS ASBURY
            [XEtat. circa 63]
From the Portrait painted by Bruff in 1808


 



FRANCIS ASBURY

    THE PROPHET
 OF THE LONG ROAD

           BY
    EZRA SQUIER TIPPLE



THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN
NEW YORK CINCINNATI


 
































  Copyright. 1916, by
EZRA SQUIER TIPPLE


 
























   IN REVERENT AND GRATEFUL PRAISE
   OF AN ITINERANT PREACHER AND
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN OF THE OLD SCHOOL.
   THE REVEREND EZRA S. SQUIER AND
      HIS DAUGHTER, MY MOTHER.


 
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                CONTENTS
CHAPTER                                  PAGE
   I. FOREWORD .............   ................  11
   II. THE FLAME ............................    15
 III. THE CHALLENGE ........................    37
 IV. THE CHURCH IN THE WILDERNESS ........      57
 V. ASBURY'S JOURNAL ......................    80
 VI. Two REVOLUTIONS .........    ............. 111
 VII. THE CHRISTMAS CONFERENCE ............ 134
 VIII. THE LONG ROAD .158
 IX. THE METHODIST EVANGELISM............ 183
 X. ASBURY AS A PREACHER     ...............  211
 XI. THE CARE OF ALL THE CHURCHES........ 241
 XII. THE LENGTHENING SHADOWS...........        276
XIII. THE MAN HIMSELF...................        300
      INDEX.................................   329


 
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             ILLUSTRATIONS

FRANCIS  ASBURY ......................... Frontispiece
                                       FACING PAGE5
THE REPUTED BIRTHPLACE OF ASBURY ........... 42
MANWOOD'S COTTAGE, HANDSWORTH, ENGLAND .... 42
LETTER OF ASBURY TO HIS PARENTS ............. 56
FACSIMILE OF THE APPOINTMENT OF THOMAS MOR-
   RELL, ETC .................................. 78
PERRY HALL, THE HOME OF HENRY DORSEY GOUGH 78
BARRATT'S CHAPEL-Interior .  ................... 140
BARRATT'S CHAPEL-Exterior .................... 140
CONSECRATION OF FRANCIS ASBURY AS A BISHOP
   OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH ....... 152
PAGE FROM THE RARE DISCIPLINE OF 1787 ....... 168
PORTRAIT OF BISHOP ASBURY .................... 190
LETTER OF JOHN WESLEY TO THE REVEREND MR.
   ASBURY ....2....... ..................... .  250
TITLE PAGE OF THE MINUTES OF THE SECOND
   COUNCIL..                               256
EBENEZER ACADEMY, VIRGINIA .  .................. 272
"WAKEFIELD," THE HOME OF HENRY WILLIS ..... 272
FACSIMILE BISHOP ASBURY's WILL, I AND Il ...... 284
BISHOP ASBURY'S "MITE SUBSCRIPTION ............ 294
HOUSE WHERE BISHOP ASBURY DIED .    . 2....... 298
ASBURY'S WATCH AND SPECTACLES      .   .   298
FRANCIS ASBURY IN MIDDLE LIFE  .    .......... 304
BISHOPS' LOT, MT. OLIVET CEMETERY, BALTIMORE 324


 
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CHAPTER I



                  FOREWORD

  BEFORE he died Francis Asbury enjoined that
no life of him should be written. Enough had
been said about him, he felt-and against him-
while living. Moreover, would not his Journal,
which was begun and written with this thought
in mind, and is therefore largely autobiographic,
give all necessary information concerning his
manner of life and his ceaseless activities through-
out his long and distinguished ecclesiastical
career And what more need be said of him after
he had finished his course, having kept the faith,
than was said of La Tour d'Auvergne, the
warrior of Breton, fallen in battle, when his name
was called and some comrade in arms who held
him in loving remembrance, responded, 'Dead
on the field'
  One day a sister of Thomas Carlyle asked him
whom he desired for his biographer. 'I want no
biography,' was his curt answer. 'But there
will be many biographies of you written,' she
persisted. Men of power of achievement cannot
escape this fate, however much they may wish to.
                     11


 
FRANCIS ASBURY



Asbury's demand was unreasonable. It was
inevitable that 'many biographies' of him would
be written. The year following his death, at the
Annual Conference in Baltimore, March, 1817,
Bishop McKendree spoke of the importance of
having an authentic and comprehensive Life of
his late colleague and friend; the Conference
concurred in his views, and a committee to carry
them into execution was appointed and given
authority to select some one for the important
task. This was done, but the choice seems not
to have been a fortunate one, for at the General
Conference in 1824, seven years having passed,
the Rev. William Beauchamp, one of the most
prominent members of that Conference, was
requested to become the biographer of the still
lamented leader, but he died before he had time
to enter upon the work. This project failing, it
would appear that the Rev. Robert Emory pur-
posed writing a Life, and gathered a considerable
quantity of valuable material, which later came
into the possession of Drew Theological Semi-
nary, where the Emory Collection of Manu-
scripts is regarded as among its most valued
treasures.
  Of this collection, as well as of other important
collections and letters and manuscripts in the
same library, I have made much use. Strick-
land's The Pioneer Bishop: or, The Life and
                     12


 
FOREWORD



Times of Francis Asbury, appeared in 1858;
The Character and Career of Francis Asbury,
Illustrated by Numerous Selections from his
Journal, Arranged in Chronological Order,
by the Rev. Edwin L. Janes, in 1872; Briggs's
Bishop Asbury: A Biographical Study for Chris-
tian Workers, in 1879; Smith's Life and Labors
of Francis Asbury, in 1898; and Dr. George P.
Mains' small but valuable Francis Asbury, in
1909.
  Methodism has had some distinctive features
by which it has been distinguished from other
denominations, and which account for its suc-
cess. Among these are its system of church gov-
ernment, its ardent, effective evangelism, its
rational, scriptural, and preachable theology, its
aggressive missionary spirit, its teaching con-
cerning experimental salvation, and the freedom
and warmth of its services, especially of its
preaching and singing. To no man are we more
indebted for the currents of denominational
power flowing through our history than to
Francis Asbury.
  A hundred years have now passed since this
man of extraordinary greatness, who in his gen-
eration did more for Christianity on this con-
tinent than any other, died, and it seems only
fitting that in this centennial year of his death
the attention of his spiritual descendants should
                     13


 
FRANCIS ASBURY



be directed to this colossal figure of our denom-
inational history, for 'with Wesley, Whitefield,
and Coke, he ranks as one of the four greatest
representatives of the Methodist movement,
and in American Methodism he ranks immeas-
urably above all his contemporaries and suc-
cessors.' This has been my object in writing this
volume. I have not attempted to write another
'Life'-this book is not so much a biography as
it is an estimate of the man. It is not the history
of a movement, but the study of a personality.
Henry Boehm, who knew him intimately, hav-
ing traveled more than forty thousand miles with
him, declared: 'Bishop Asbury possessed more
deadness to the world, more of a self-sacrificing
spirit, more of the spirit of prayer, of Christian
enterprise, of labor, and of benevolence, than
any other man I ever knew; he was the most
unselfish being I was ever acquainted with.'
Beyond any other person he embodied the
genius and spirit of early Methodism. Among
Methodism's noblest sons he has the preeminence,
and though not canonized should be forever
enshrined in our hearts, as our Saint Francis,
the Prophet of the Long Road.



14




 
CHAPTER II



                 THE FLAME

  WHEN Francis Asbury was born, August 20,
1745, the fire of the 'Evangelical Revival' in Eng-
land had been burning for some years. The
story of this marvelous religious awakening will
never lose its interest. However often it may
be repeated, it will never become stale or com-
monplace any more than the rays of the sun grow
old. The romance and charm of the beginnings
of the Methodist movement in the eighteenth
century are second only to the fascinating and
stirring account of the early days of Christianity.
Moreover, have they not many features in com-
mon Methodism was more nearly a renewal of
primitive Christianity than any movement of the
centuries since the apostles. It was a revival of
the teachings of Christ and of the attitude of his
disciples toward personal religion and toward
society, and of the whole spirit and purpose of
the gospel.
  If what accredited English writers say of that
period is even half true, England in the early
decades of the eighteenth century was a sorry
                     15


 
FRANCIS ASBURY



spectacle, in spite of the fact that it had men of
brilliant genius like Bolingbroke, Walpole, and
Chesterfield, and men of learning like Butler,
Warburton, Whiston, and Gibson, Bishop of
London, 'whose piety was equal to his erudition.'
This was the century too of Isaac Watts and
Philip Doddridge, and what men of light and
power they were! On the other hand, 'Jonathan
Swift was playing the part of a clever ecclesias-
tical buffoon,' and the clergy as a rule were
impotent as teachers of a pure Christianity.
Bishop Burnet said in 1713: 'The much greater
part of those who come to be ordained are igno-
rant to a degree not to be apprehended by those
who are not obliged to know it. . . . They can
give no account, or at least a very imperfect one,
of the contents even of the Gospels.' The plain
precepts of the Scriptures were disregarded by
priests and people. The Bible was a neglected
book. Sunday was a day of sport, and clergy-
men were notoriously active in their observance
of the day in this fashion. The fox-hunting
parson is a conspicuous figure in the literature
of the eighteenth century. Religion was a term
rather than a life. The predominating char-
acteristic of the period was the prominence given
to external morality. Emotion had no place in
religion. The entire sufficiency of natural reli-
gion was blatantly asserted by many so-called
                     16


 
THE FLAME



teachers. Much of the skepticism of the day
took the form of deism. Hume was a deist,
and so was the other historian, Gibbon. The
practice of extempore preaching had died out,
and preachers droned platitudes by the hour.
There was no vigor, no intensity of zeal, no
ardent emotion, no compelling unction, in the
preaching of the age.   Philanthropy-there
was nothing of the sort worth speaking about.
Religion was at low ebb. Writers of that period
tell us that gin-drinking had become a mania,
being an almost universal habit, and, indeed,
that every kind of sin had some writer to cham-
pion and teach it, and a bookseller and hawker
to divulge and spread it.' It was a debased
and wicked age. 'Never had century arisen on
Christian England so void of soul and faith as
that which opened with Queen Anne, and which
reached its misty noon beneath the second George
-a dewless night succeeded by a sunless dawn.
There was no freshness in the past, and no
promise in the future. The Puritans were
buried, and the Methodists were not born. The
philosopher of the age was Bolingbroke, the
moralist was Addison, the minstrel was Pope,
and the preacher was Atterbury. The world
had the idle, discontented look of the morning
after some mad holiday, and, like rocket-sticks
  Tyerman, Life and Times of John Wealeiy, vol. i, p. 62.
                     17


 
FRANCIS ASBURY



and the singed paper from last night's squibs,
the spent jokes of Charles and Rochester lay
all about, and people yawned to look at them.
The reign of buffoonery was past, but the reign
of faith and earnestness had not commenced.' 1
That is not a pleasant picture, but it is a true
one. The English court was entirely corrupt,
the Established Church was little better, and
like king and priest like people! England
needed Methodism. Abounding wickedness could
only be overcome by abounding grace, and God
never fails his children.
  Just at the hour when the situation was most
utterly dark, deplorable, and unpromising, some-
thing happened-a fire broke out, and soon the
Methodist poet of awakened, renewed England
was singing with ecstatic exultation,

         See, how great a flame aspires,
           Kindled by a spark of grace,
         Jesus' love the nations fires,
           Sets the kingdom all ablaze.

It was wonderful what was happening. People
did not realize the significance of it all at the
time, but they did later. Lecky, the judicial
historian of the England of that century, makes
this interesting comparison: 'Although the career
of the elder Pitt and the splendid victories by
  Tyerman, Life and Times of John Wesley, vol. i, p. 61.
                      18


 
THE FLAME



land and sea that were won during his ministry
form unquestionably the most dazzling episodes
in the reign of George II, they must yield, I
think, in real importance to that religious
revolution which shortly before had begun in
England by the preaching of the Wesleys and
Whitefield.' A more recent writer gives this as
his estimate of the influence of the Methodist
revival upon England: 'The religious revival of
that period had the office of a healthful salt in
the national blood. It purified domestic life.
It wove bonds of quick and generous sympathy
betwixt all classes. It put a more robust fiber
into the national character. It gave a new
tenderness to charity, a nobler daring to philan-
thropy, a loftier authority to morals, as well as
a new grace to religion. So it helped to cleanse
the national life.'
  What was the beginning of this revival which
was so far-reaching in its effects 'When and
where did Methodism have its birth Isaac
Taylor says with much justice: 'The Wesleys'
mother was the mother of Methodism in a reli-
gious and moral sense; for her courage, her sub-
missiveness to authority, the high tone of her
mind, its independence, and its self-control, the
warmth of her devotional feelings, and the prac-
tical direction given to them, came up and were
visibly repeated in the character and conduct of
                      19


 
THE FLAME



  The Methodist movement, however, may be
said to date from the formation of the Holy
Club at Oxford-for which Charles Wesley
was largely responsible-a small group of ear-
nest-minded young students, who were close
friends, and who being religiously inclined met
together at first every Sunday evening, then
two evenings a week, and finally every evening
from six to nine o'clock. John Wesley was not
at Oxford when the friends first came together,
nor did he return to the university until after
the name 'Methodists' had been given to the
methodical group; but when he did return he
was at once recognized as the head of the group
and was designated the curator, or father of
the Holy Club. The little society had numerous
other names tacked to it, such as the Godly Club,
Bible Moths, the Reforming Club, Enthusiasts;
but the one destined to outlast all others was
'Methodists,' which was given the members of
the society by a young gentleman of Christ
Church, who, impressed by the exactness and
regularity of their lives and studies, said with
a smile, 'Here is a new sect of Methodists sprung
up.' And the name stuck. It had been securely
fastened. Little could that young Oxford stu-
dent have dreamed, when he thus labeled the
members of the Holy Club, that in less than
two centuries millions upon millions of people
                     21


 
FRANCIS ASBURY



her sons.'" There is much in heredity. Her
father was Dr Samuel Annesley, and what
manner of man he was may be inferred from
the title given him, 'the St. Paul of the Noncon-
formists.' Though Susanna Wesley was the wife
of a clergyman of the Established Church, the
blood of ecclesiastical independence and abso-
lute fidelity to conscience flowed in her veins.
The paternal grandfather of the Wcsleys was
an itinerant minister of like unflinching loyalty
to convictions, who was imprisoned a half dozen
times by the enemies of religion, living a simple,
godly life among fisher-folk with joy, and a
successful winner of souls, who greatly desired
to go as a missionary to America.2 Was not
the founder of Methodism a true successor of
this devoted man John Wesley's father was
trained for the Nonconformist ministry, but
later became a clergyman of the Church of
England, an earnest, devoted servant of the
church. It has ever been the proud boast of the
followers of Wesley that Methodism was born
in a university. It is truer to say that it had its
beginning in a long line of sturdy Christian
ancestors esteeming wisdom above riches, and in
the Epworth Rectory, a Christian home and
school.

' Wesley and Methodism, p. 19.
2 Telford, Life of Wesley, p. 6.
                      20


 
FRANCIS ASBURY



in all the earth would be proudly wearing the
name! The three commanding figures in this
national awakening were John and Charles
Wesley and George Whitefield, all three of
whom, strangely enough when we consider the
immense distance across the Atlantic and the
difficulties and discomforts of travel in the eight-
eenth century, and easily comprehensible when
we remember the religious zeal and devotion of
the men, came to America as missionaries,
Whitefield making thirteen voyages across the
ocean, and laboring with brilliant success
throughout the length and breadth of the colonies,
the others giving themselves after a brief but
momentous period in Georgia to the spread of
scriptural holiness in England.
  The remarkable progress of the Wesleyan
revival in England was due under the blessing
of God to three outstanding features of the
movement-preaching, hymn-singing, and or-
ganization. The part that the sermon played
in that religious awakening can never be esti-
mated. Preaching is a divine institution. What
more romantic in history than the story of the
Christian pulpit Are there more wonderful
adventures recorded than those dared and
achieved through preaching Moreover, preach-
ing best expresses the genius of Protestantism.
It was Martin Luther who held that there could
                     22


 
THE FLAMIE



be no true worship where there was no true
preaching. And the surpassing testimony to the
effectiveness of the Protestant Reformation of
the sixteenth century was that wherever the doc-
trines of the Reformation spread pulpits were
set up, and wherever pulpits were set up the
cause advanced by leaps and bounds. The same
was true of the Wesleyan revival of the eight-
eenth century. All the great revivals of the cen-
turies have been brought about through preach-
ing. Almost without exception the great reform
movements of the ages have been begun and
carried forward by preachers. The prophet, the
preacher, has been God's wonder-worker through
the centuries, and how mightily God used him
in the century of which I am writing! Men
were saying in that century, when Hugh Blair
was uttering commonplaces in Edinburgh, as
they are saying now, that the day of preaching
had gone by, when, lo! a thousand insistent voices
were heard along the highways of that 'fair
island, set in silver,' and a new day had dawned.
  As the preacher of that period no man more
worthily deserves the crown of supremacy than
George Whitefield. Of his eloquence Hume,
who, as a diversion from writing history, went
to the Tabernacle, London, said that Whitefield
was the most ingenious preacher he had ever
heard, and that it was indeed worth coming
                     23


 
FRANCIS ASBURY



twenty miles to listen to him. He then repeated
a striking passage which occurred toward the
close of a sermon which had peculiarly impressed
him, and added, 'This address was accompanied
by such animated yet natural action, that it sur-
passed anything I ever saw or heard in any other
preacher.' Gillies, Whitefield's earliest biog-
rapher, who gives this testimony and other such,
declares that they are 'set down, not for their
weight, but for their singularity.' But Hume's
testimony must be given weight. He certainly
never spoke such generous words of his preacher
friends, Laurence Sterne and Dean Swift. Ben-
jamin Franklin, who was Whitefield's first pub-
lisher in America, and who, when Whitefield
on his second visit to America wrote him from
Boston, asking him to secure lodgings for him
in Philadelphia, bade him welcome to his own
house, was puzzled to understand how it was
that Whitefield met with such favor wherever
he went in America. Yet he speaks enthusias-
tically of the matchless delivery of his sermons.
Samuel Johnson thought little of Whitefield's
oratory, but conceded his popularity. Men of
letters, like Pope and Horace Walpole, derided
him. Warburton, after reading his Journal,
declared he was mad as ever the Quaker George
Fox was. Hogarth caricatured him. 'Fanatic'
and 'hypocrite' were favorite titles applied to
                     24


 
THE FLAME



him. There were those, however, who appraised
him at his real worth. Hervey, who was brought
into a knowledge of saving grace by him; Dod-
dridge, who opened his pulpit to him; Isaac
Watts, himself an extemporaneous preacher of
no mean ability; Venn, John Newton, and
Toplady, one of Whitefield's friends, all acknowl-
edged his unmatched ability as an orator, and
gave him credit for having been useful in the
course of his ministry to tens of thousands. Nor
must Cowper's famous eulogium be forgotten:

  He followed Paul-his zeal a kindred flame,
  His apostolic charity the same.
  Like him, crossed cheerfully tempestuous seas,
  Forsaking country, kindred, friends, and ease;
  Like him he labored, and like him, content
  To bear it, suffered shame where'er he went.

  But the preaching of Whitefield, or of John
or Charles Wesley, or of all the 'Evangelicals,'
cannot fully account for the swiftness with which
the fires of the Evangelical Revival spread. The
hymns of Charles Wesley had much to do with
it. The saintly Fletcher of Madeley felt that
'One of the greatest blessings that God has be-
stowed upon the Methodists, next to their Bible,
is their collection of hymns.' James Martineau
once made a similar but more sweeping state-
ment: 'After the Scriptures, the Wesley hymn
book appears to me the grandest instrument of
                     25


 
FRANCIS ASBURY



popular religious culture that Christendom has
ever produced.' A modern writer says: 'Psalm-
ody, which had been neglected in England be-
vond what some readers would suppose, the
Wesleys took up from the beginning, with a
clear-sighted view of its importance, and with
a zeal that insured success. Methodism never
could have become what it did without its un-
paralleled hymn book. That, perhaps, has been
more effective in preserving its evangelical theol-
ogy than Wesley's Sermons and his Notes on
the New Testament. Where one man read the
homilies and the exposition, a thousand sang the
hymns. All divisions in Christendom have a
stamp imprinted on their piety, by which they
are easily known. As to the fervor of Meth-
odism, there can be no mistake; and it is owing
largely to the concrete and personal character
of its psalmody. It does not deal in the calm,
intellectual contemplation of abstract themes,
however sacred and sublime; but in the experi-
ence of believers, as soldiers of Christ, "fighting,"
"watching," "suffering," "working," and "seek-
ing for full redemption." You catch in them the
trumpet-blast, the cry of the wounded, the shout
of victory, and the dirge at a warrior's funeral.' "
John Wesley was the father of the Methodist
hymnody, being both a writer and a translator of
'Stoughton, Religion in England in 1800-1860, p. 23.
                     26


 
THE FLAME



hymns; but Charles Wesley is Methodism's most
illustrious poet. 'The Evangelical Revival seems
to have silenced John Wesley's muse, whilst it
woke up Charles to a poetic fervor which only
ceased with his last breath.' It was his conver-
sion which lighted the sacred fires of Charles
Wesley's poetic genius. When he experienced
the blessed joys of sonship-

         My God is reconciled,
           His pardoning voice I hear,
         He owns me for his child,
           I can no longer fear-

all the springs of his nature burst into song, and
soon all England was singing such glorious
hymns as, 'Christ the Lord is risen to-day'; 'O
for a thousand tongues to sing'; 'Depth of Mercy!
can there be'; 'Soldiers of Christ, arise'; 'O Love
divine, how sweet thou art!' 'Come on, my part-
ners in distress'; 'And are we yet alive' and
'Jesus, Lover of my soul,'-this last Henry Ward
Beecher said he would rather have written than
to have had the fame of all the kings of all the
earth. The effect of the singing of these hymns
of the gospel was indescribable. Austin Phelps
once said that for the planting of great Christian
truths deep in the hearts of an awakened people
there is nothing comparable to John Wesley's
tongue of fire, seconded by Charles 'Wesley's
                     27


 
FRANCIS ASBURY



hymns floating heavenward on the twilight air
from ten thousand Methodist voices. 'Under
such conditions Methodism is inspired. To know
what Methodist voices are under that inspiration
one must hear them. Mobs, bellowing with
infuriated blood-thirst, which neither John
Wesley's coal-black eye nor Whitefield's impe-
rial voice could quell, have been known to turn
and slink away when the truth was sung at them
in Charles Wesley's hymns. Their ringleaders
more than once broke down in tears and groans
of remorse. They took the preacher by the hand,
and went his way with him, arm in arm, swearing
by all that is holy that not a hair of his head
should be touched. Thus is Martin Luther's
saying verified anew, "The devil can stand any-
thing but good music, and that makes him roar." '
  In particular Charles Wesley's 'invitation
hymns' were of great value in the spread of the
Flame. 'They strike a new note. They are the
battlesongs of an open-air preacher. . . . His
meters are light and lilting, winning the ear of the
simple and arresting the casual passer-by. Only
a preacher, perhaps only an open-air preacher,
could have written such hymns. They are not
hymns of the oratory, of the classroom, or the
village church; but of that vast cathedral whose
roof is the blue vault of heaven; they are songs
of Moorfields, of Kingswood, of Newcastle, and
                     28


 
THE FLAME



of Gwennap. Perhaps of all Wesley's hymns
these are the most characteristically Method-
ist,' and always effective.
  But unapproached as was Charles Wesley as
a sacred poet, and immeasurable as was his con-
tribution to the Evangelical Revival, brilliant as
was Whitefield as an orator, greater than either
of them, measured by any standard, was John
Wesley. He may not have been as great an
orator as Whitefield, though some writers rank
him above Whitefield as a preacher; but grant-
ing that he was not the greatest preacher of his
day, he was, as Fitchett says, Methodism's fore-
most and most diligent preacher.' Nor was he
a poet of mere ordinary ability. His brother
was a far more prolific hymnist, but John Wesley
had exceptional gifts, both as a writer and trans-
lator of hymns. He was by all odds the most
commanding figure of the Evangelical Revival.
Buckle calls him 'the first ecclesiastical states-
man,' and he was. His genius for government
was unsurpassed. It was he who harnessed the
forces of the revival and unwittingly builded
a Church. Augustine Birrell thought 'no other
man did such a life's work for England; you
cannot cut him out of our national life.' Horace
Bushnell puts him in a class with Chrysostom,
Augustine, and Luther. Brierley, in his Essays,
I Fitchett, Wesley and His Century, p. 190.
                     29


 
FRANCIS ASBURY



compares Wesley with Paul, Bernard of Clair-
vaux, and others. Emerson, Lowell, Holmes,
George William Curtis, and other American
writers speak with appreciation of the best
known figure in Great Britain during the half
century when the great Revival was stirring both
England and America. He was the very genius
of this far-reaching religious movement. What
marvelous versatility he showed! He was an
indefatigable and very skillful controversialist,
a voluminous writer, and a still more voluminous
editor. He moves with such rapidity that it is
with difficulty that we follow him. To travel two
hundred thousand miles over rough roads, after
he is nearly forty years of age, to write books
without number, to preach forty thousand ser-
mons, to organize societies, and counsel with his
helpers, to carry on an extensive correspondence,
to inaugurate reform and philanthropic move-
ments, to do all these and more almost staggers
belief. As a leader and director, the world has
seen few superiors; military men recognized in
him a mighty strategist. In war he would have
been a greater general than Wellington. He
was endowed with matchless courage, and, like
Becket, he never showed to better advantage than
in moments of peril. Mobs quailed before his
flashing eye. When he looked at foes they be-
came his stanch defenders.   Like all great
                     30


 
THE FLAME



leaders, he had an indomitable will. Difficulties
were as summer breezes, opposition was like a
song of birds. He was a master of system. His
sermons and his daily life alike were planned with
great minuteness. His schedules were inflexible
and were religiously adhered to. The loss of a
moment of time was a dire calamity. Life was
too short to have any briefest portion wasted or
unimproved. He regarded time as something
sacred, for every fragment of which he had to
give an account.
  But not yet have we the secret of the Flame.
Neither genius for organization, nor other super-
lative gifts will account for John Wesley's influ-
ence on England in the eighteenth century, an
influence which will have produced, in the judg-
ment of Robert Southey, 'the greatest effects
centuries or perhaps millenniums hence, if the
present race of men should continue so long.'
The secret of Wesley's surpassing power over
men must be sought in the realm of the spiritual.
May, 24, 1738, will ever be a memorable date in
history, secular and ecclesiastical. Lecky says
that date marks the beginning of a new epoch in
England. It was on that day that the 'some-
thing happened' of which I have already made
mention. That was the appointed day,-
    The earth was still-but knew not why;
    The world was listening-unawares.
                     31


 
FRANCIS ASBURY



    How calm a moment may precede
    One that shall thrill the world forever!-
when God bestowed upon his chosen servant,
singled out for a mighty work, the divine gift
which made him the prophet of a new life. The
story of this memorable hour as Wesley recites
it has become a classic: 'In the evening, I went
very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street,
where one was reading Luther's preface to the
Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before
nine, while he was describing the change which
God works in the heart through faith in Christ,
I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did
trust in Christ; Christ alone, for salvation; and
an assurance was given me, that he had taken
away my sins, even mine, and saved me from
the law of sin and death.' For years Wesley
had been searching for God's deep peace. He
had tried asceticism, but it had failed to give him
rest of soul. He had gone as a missionary to
Georgia, but not even in his work among the
Indians had he found the joy of the Lord; but
from that moment, when he felt his 'heart
strangely warmed,' he realized that he had
reached the center, and forever after he dwelt
there in security and sweet content. He knew
t