Mr Wesley never fully recovered from the effects of the serious accident which befell him in 1731. The reader will have perceived this in the letters given in the previous chapter. Mrs Wesley, writing to her son John, says, “Your father is in a very bad state of health; he sleeps little and eats less. He seems not to have any apprehension of his approaching exit, but I fear he has but a short time to live. It is with much pain and difficulty that he performs divine service on the Lord’s-day, which sometimes he is obliged to contract very much. Everybody observes his decay but himself.”^[338]

Mr Wesley had a severe illness about the year 1733, which totally disabled him for six months. The first two sermons he preached after this affliction were from the words, “Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole; sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee,” (John v. 14.)

The last two sermons, noted in his memorandum-book, were preached at Epworth, August 18, 1734, on 1 Sam. xii. 17: “Is it not wheat harvest to-day? I will call unto the Lord,” &c. After showing that unseasonable weather, in time of harvest, is a just judgment inflicted by the hand of God for the wickedness of the people, he proceeds to address his congregation thus:—“I am afraid, nay, too well assured, that many of you have hardened your hearts as did Pharaoh; for otherwise, how came the house of God so empty here last Sunday? The people went in shameful droves to do their own ways, and find their own pleasures, and speak their own words; and left a very small flock behind them on their knees to cry mightily to God that He would have mercy upon us, that we might not perish.”^[339]

There is no evidence that Mr Wesley preached after this. His death-bed scene was exquisitely beautiful. His sons, John and Charles, were present, and from both of them we have accounts of it.

John Wesley, in a letter dated March 22, 1748, and supposed to be written to Archbishop Secker, says:—“My father did not die unacquainted with the faith of the gospel, of the primitive Christians, or of our first Reformers; the same which, by the grace of God, I preach, and which is just as new as Christianity. What he experienced before I know not; but I know that, during his last illness, which continued eight months, he enjoyed a clear sense of his acceptance with God. I heard him express it more than once, although, at that time, I understood him not. ‘The inward witness, son, the inward witness,’ said he to me, ‘that is the proof, the strongest proof of Christianity.’ And when I asked him (the time of his change drawing nigh), ‘Sir, are you in much pain?’ He answered aloud with a smile, ‘God does chasten me with pain, yea, all my bones with strong pain; but I thank Him for all, I bless Him for all, I love Him for all!’ I think the last words he spoke, when I had just commended his soul to God, were, ‘Now you have done all;’ and, with the same serene, cheerful countenance, he fell asleep without one struggle, or sigh, or groan. I cannot therefore doubt but the Spirit of God bore an inward witness with his spirit that he was a child of God.”^[340]

John Wesley, in his sermon on Love, preached at Savannah in 1736, again adverts to his father’s death, and says:—“When asked, not long before his release, ‘Are the consolations of God small with you?’ He replied aloud, ‘No, no, no!’ and then calling all that were near him by their names, he said, ‘Think of heaven, talk of heaven; all the time is lost when we are not thinking of heaven.’”^[341]

Charles Wesley’s description of his father’s death is more lengthened, and is contained in a letter addressed to his brother Samuel, and which was first published by Dr Priestley in 1791. The letter was written two days after the funeral, and is as follows:—

Thus lived and died Samuel Wesley.^[346] Near the east end of Epworth Church, there is a plain grit tombstone, supported by brick-work, on which is cut the following inscription, said to have been composed by Mrs Wesley. Passing over the absurd manner in which it is divided, it is utterly unworthy of the distinguished man whose memory it is intended to perpetuate:—

Our task is ended. Many and pleasant have been the hours spent in tracing the history of one of the noblest men that God ever made. It is superfluous to say more respecting him; and yet, with a lingering reluctance to quit the work, we cannot deny ourselves the gratification of adding a few more words concerning his general character.

Samuel Wesley, jun., wrote an elegy immediately after his father’s death, which his brother John published in the first volume of the Arminian Magazine. The following are extracts:—

The poetry of the Epworth rector has unquestionably been “slighted and derided,” and it must be honestly confessed that some of his verses are exceedingly careless and inharmonious; but this was not so much the fault of the man’s poetic genius, as of his too great haste in writing them. His poems were written amid the pressure of parochial duties; and, we incline to think, sometimes when he was hard pushed for want of food and clothes for himself and family. Even his most hasty and unfinished pieces flash with the purest poetic fire, and are not without signs that the man who wrote them was a bard of the highest order. It was from him that his three sons, Samuel, John, and Charles, and his two daughters, Emilia and Mehetabel, inherited that remarkable poetic passion, which gave birth to some of the finest verse in the English language. Copious extracts from his poetry have been already given; but as yet no mention has been made of his “Eupolis’s Hymn to the Creator.”^[348] Dr Adam Clarke pronounces this poem to be “the finest on the subject in the English language. It possesses what Racine calls the genie createur, the genuine spirit of poetry. It is not saying too much to assert, the man who was the author of what is called ‘Eupolis’s Hymn to the Creator,’ had he taken time, care, and pains, and had not been continually harassed with the res augusta domi, would have adorned the highest walks of poetry.”^[349]

This remarkable poem was first published by John Wesley, in the Arminian Magazine for 1778, and the following are extracts from it:—

Mr Wesley was a man of immense reading, and was possessed of great vivacity and wit. Sometimes he has been represented as of a harsh and stern character; but nothing can be farther from the truth than this—“His children,” says Miss Wesley, his granddaughter, “idolised his memory.” They would scarce have done that if he had been ungenial and gruff. It is true, he kept his children in the strictest order; but he also evinced the greatest tenderness, and thus secured both the respect and love of his numerous family. To his judicious method of instructing and managing his offspring, the Methodists owe an incalculable debt of gratitude; and, on this account, his name among them ought to be held in lasting remembrance. He was full of anecdote, and of witty and wise sayings, which gave to his private conversations great interest. The withering wit of his son Samuel, the quiet sarcasm of his son John, the playful raillery of his daughter Emilia, and the keen satire of Mehetabel, were all inherited from himself. In early life he was connected with some of the greatest wits then flourishing, and to the day of his death highly relished pleasantry, when it was pure and good-tempered.

One instance, given by Dr Adam Clarke, is as follows:—At Temple Belwood, near Epworth, lived a miserly man, who, contrary to the whole tenor of his life, once mustered courage enough to invite a few friends to dinner. Mr Wesley was present, and displayed his wit, and his great facility in composition, by repeating, impromptu, at the close of such an unusual festival:—

Which last line was immediately confirmed by the mean-spirited host, who said, “No, gentlemen; it is too expensive.”

Dr Clarke relates another story, which was somewhat severely criticised in the Methodist Magazine for 1824; was corrected by Mr Watson in his Life of Wesley, in 1831; and has been sharply handled by Mr Kirk, in his graphic biography of 1864. Because the story has excited so much attention, I feel bound to give it. Dr Clarke says he has related the story, as nearly as possible, in the very words used by John Wesley to himself, when they last met in Bristol.

Samuel Wesley had a clerk, who was well-meaning and honest, but, at the same time, weak and vain. Of this, an instance is given somewhat ludicrous. It is said, that on the return of King William from one of his martial expeditions, this self-conceited official rose up, in the midst of divine service, in Epworth church, and, with the nasal twang usual among such functionaries, and to the unfortunate amusement of the congregation, said—“Let us sing, to the praise and glory of God, a hymn of my own composing:—

This poetical clerk believed the rector, Mr Wesley, to be the greatest man in Epworth parish; and that, as he stood next to him in church services, he was also next in worth and dignity. Among the man’s other emoluments was the privilege of wearing the rector’s cast-off clothes and wigs, for the latter of which his head was far too small. Mr Wesley, finding him particularly vain of one of these wigs, formed the design to mortify him in the presence of the congregation. One morning, before church time, Mr Wesley said, “John, I shall preach on a particular subject to-day; and shall choose my own psalm, of which I shall give out the first line, and you shall proceed as usual.” Accordingly the service went forward as it was wont to do, till the time came for singing, when Mr Wesley gave out the following line—

This was sung, and then John, peeping out of his large canonical wig, proceeded with the next line, and, in the orthodox twang, drawled out—

The congregation, struck with John’s appearance, saw the ludicrousness of the coincidence, and, to John’s great mortification, burst into a fit of laughter.

Such is Dr Clarke’s version of the story. The reviewer in the magazine objects to it—first, Because it was too trivial to merit a place in such a work; second, Because it reflects upon the good-nature of Mr Wesley, and upon his attention to that uniform dignity and seriousness of demeanour which are justly expected from a Christian minister; and third, Because, in one important particular, the story was untrue, for Mr Wesley took no part in the business whatever; but the whole was the culpable trick of the whimsical clerk, who chose such an opportunity of rendering himself ridiculous, and of making his neighbours laugh.

Mr Watson admits that the anecdote is laughable enough, but says, it “implicates Mr Wesley in an irreverent act in the house of God, of which he was not capable;” and moreover, “Mr Wesley had no hand in selecting the psalm, which appears to have been purely accidental.”

Mr Kirk takes the same view, and further, doubts whether such lines were ever read at all; or, if they were, he suggests that they must have been part of another hymn of the clerk’s “own composing.” Perhaps so; Mr Kirk says neither he nor his friends have been able to find anything like the lines in either Sternhold and Hopkins, or in any other of the “old versions” of the Psalms. This is quite correct, and we believe that the exact lines above recited cannot be found in any “version;” but the following occur in an edition of Sternhold’s, published in 1729, and now before us:—

The origin of the doubts respecting the authenticity of the story may be found in the following letter, published in the Wesleyan Times newspaper of March 7, 1864. It was written to Dr Clarke by Miss Sarah Wesley, at the time he published his “Wesley Family:”—

In another letter to Dr Clarke, dated “Jan. 24, 1824,” the same writer says:—

Dr Clarke still adhered to the correctness of his version of the story, and defended the action on the ground that “it was the only way in which a weak, well-meaning, but vain man, could be cured of a vanity discreditable to himself and troublesome to others;” and that “the means employed were as innocent, as they were appropriate and efficient.” He also justifies his publication of the anecdote, because he thought the thing was “characteristic of the man;” that it is “from facts of this nature that the biographer forms a proper estimate of the character he describes;” and that, without “such incidents,” he must “plod on in dry detail of facts,” in a manner “little pleasing to himself,” and almost “unsupportable to his readers.”

This is all that the writer knows respecting this paltry business, which has become far more important than it deserves to be. It has already occupied too much of the writer’s space, and hence, without any comment of his own, he leaves the ingenious reader to form his own opinion.

Matthew Wesley, in the letter already quoted in the previous chapter, insinuates that his brother had indulged in “ungovernable appetites.” This was an unfounded and cruel accusation. In all respects, Samuel Wesley was a most temperate and frugal man, except, perhaps, in his indulgence of snuff and tobacco.

Living in the midst of Lincolnshire fens, it is not surprising that he used the pipe; for the belief was common that it helped to prevent disease. It is not improbable, however, that the weed was an early friend; for, in the Athenian Oracle, while the editors allow that tobacco when immoderately used is insalubrious, they also, as is usual with smokers, contend that, when properly employed, it helps to cure headaches, toothaches, asthmas, and old coughs; and though it might induce drinking, yet so did the eating of bread and cheese or Westphalia ham. Snuff, however, seems to have been Mr Wesley’s favourite indulgence; and on this account he was, perhaps, undutifully attacked by his son, Samuel, as early as the year 1714, in one of the keenest satires that the young poet ever penned. Speaking of the box, he says:—

And again of snuff itself:—

This withering satire was written by young Wesley at the request of his aunt, Ann Annesley, and for it he makes a graceful and not unneeded apology to his father. Mr Kirk thinks that, because of his embarrassments, Samuel Wesley ought to have dispensed with the luxuries of the pipe and of snuff; but perhaps if Mr Kirk himself had ever used them, his opinion would have been somewhat modified. John Wesley says the use of tobacco is “an uncleanly and unwholesome self-indulgence;” and that the use of snuff is “a silly, nasty, dirty custom.”^[351] He enacted a law, making it imperative that on no account should any of his preachers take snuff, and that they should strongly dissuade the Methodists from taking it, and should answer all their pretences for doing so, and especially the pretence that it cured the colic.^[352] He directed that, on receiving “new helpers” at Conference, solemn fasting and prayer should be used, and this question among others be proposed to the presented candidates, “Do you take no snuff, tobacco, drams?”^[353] We have not a syllable to say against all this. We believe that, for medical purposes, smoking and snuffing have no good in them; and, moreover, we share in the disgust felt by thousands of intelligent and good people at seeing so many empty-headed boys of the present generation attempting to deceive the public, and to make them believe that they are men, because they happen to have the audacity to cultivate a jagged moustache, and to smoke a pipe; yet, considering the sequestered life which Mr Wesley lived, and considering the almost unceasing troubles through which he had to pass, we can easily excuse his seeking, at so insignificant an expense, the sort of soothing stupor or cerebral solace, which, as old smokers and old snuffers tell us, is derivable from the much abused, fragrant weed, tobacco.

For forty-seven years Mr Wesley was a diligent, faithful minister of Christ.

“As a pastor,” says Dr Whitehead, “he was indefatigable in the duties of his office: a constant preacher, feeding the flock with the pure doctrines of the gospel; and diligent in visiting the sick, and administering such advice as their situations required. This integrity was conspicuous, and his conduct uniform. Few men have been so diligent in the pastoral office as he was; none perhaps more so. Though his income was small, and his family large, he had always something to give to those in distress. In conversation he was grave, yet instructive, lively, and full of anecdote. His last moments were as conspicuous for resignation and Christian fortitude, as his life had been for zeal and diligence.”^[354]

“Mr Wesley,” says the Rev. John Hampson, “was a voluminous writer. He was the author of a Latin Comment on Job; a work of much erudition, and perhaps for that reason but little read. He also wrote the History of the Bible, and the Life of Christ in verse, with several smaller pieces. His larger poems were rather injurious than advantageous to his reputation; and, instead of increasing his estimation with the public, exposed him to the derision of the wits, and the censure of the critics.^[355] But Mr Wesley’s talents as a writer are the least of his praise. He was not merely a man of learning and ability. His piety and integrity were striking and exemplary. He was given to hospitality; and in every respect a most excellent parish priest. The last moments of this valuable man were crowned with most striking fortitude, magnanimity, and Christian resignation. It is no exaggeration to say, that a better man, or a more vigilant and faithful pastor, he did not leave behind him. He united the zeal and courage of a martyr, with the simplicity and evangelical spirit of an apostle; and though he had no great cause to boast the munificence, he possessed the esteem of some of the first characters in the nation.”^[356]

“Samuel Wesley,” says Dr Clarke, “was of a short stature; of a spare, but athletic make; and nearly resembled in person his son John. It is likely that the picture prefixed to his ‘Dissertations on the Book of Job’ was a correct resemblance of him.^[357]

“He was earnest, conscientious, and indefatigable in his search after truth. He thought deeply on every subject which was either to form an article in his creed, or a principle for his conduct. His orthodoxy was pure and solid; his religious conduct strictly correct; his piety towards God ardent; his loyalty to his king unsullied; and his love to his fellow-creatures strong and unconfined. Though of High Church principles and High Church politics,^[358] yet he could separate the man from the opinions he held, and when he found him in distress, knew him only as a friend and brother. He was a rigid disciplinarian, both in his church and his family. He knew all his parishioners. He visited them from house to house; he sifted their creed, and permitted none to be corrupt in their opinions or in their practices, without instruction or reproof. In this manner he went through his parish, which was near three miles long, three times; and he was visiting it the fourth time round when he fell into his last sickness.”^[359]

Nothing more is needed. In the foregoing testimonies the writer heartily concurs. Mr Wesley’s behaviour, as a parish clergyman, was in all respects exemplary excepting one; we mean his enforcement of canonical laws concerning penance, the neglect of which, we are bound to say, would have been more virtuous than the observance.

Remarks have sometimes been made to the effect that Mr Wesley’s labours were honoured with but small success; and, in support of this, the testimony of his son John is quoted, but quoted only in part. The entire entry in his journal is as follows:—“1742. Sunday, June 13.—I preached in Epworth churchyard to a vast multitude, gathered together from all parts. I continued among them for near three hours, and yet we scarce knew how to part. Oh, let none think his labour of love is lost because the fruit does not immediately appear! Near forty years did my father labour here, but he saw little fruit of all his labour. I took some pains among this people too, and my strength also seemed spent in vain; but now the fruit appeared. There were scarce any in the town on whom either my father or I had taken any pains formerly, but the seed, sown so long since, now sprung up, bringing forth repentance and remission of sins.”^[360]

If this testimony of John Wesley means what it says, it means that the labours of his father at Epworth, so far from being barren, were crowned with great results; only the results were more visible after his death than they were before.

We have already seen that Mr Wesley outlived the brutal hostility with which he was met during the first years of his residence at Epworth, and that his dozen communicants had increased to above a hundred. But besides all this, we have another testimony by his son John, contained in a letter written to the venerable father a few months only before his death. He says—“For many years you have diligently fed the flock committed to your care with the sincere milk of the Word. Many of them the Great Shepherd has, by your hand, delivered from the hand of the Destroyer, some of whom have already entered into peace, and some remain unto this day. For myself, I doubt not but when your warfare is accomplished you shall come to your grave, not with sorrow, but as a ripe shock of corn, full of years and victories.”^[361]

Such a declaration sufficiently refutes the vague, floating idea respecting Samuel Wesley’s want of ministerial success; but had such testimony not existed, and had the idea mentioned been strictly true, it would have been enough of honour, for even so good a man as the Epworth rector, to be the author of some of the best books in the English language, and to be the father of the greatest evangelist of modern times, and of the best sacred bard that has flourished since the days when the poetic lyre was made to vibrate music so sweetly celestial, under the wondrous inspired touch of David the son of Jesse.