with the Divine Spirit, to know, to have the inward consciousness of this that he struggled for nigh ten years. It did not fully come to his soul until he was thirty-five years old. When crossing the Atlantic he fell in with a band of Moravians, and they powerfully influenced his character and life. He records it himself.
"My brother," said the Moravian, "I must first ask you one or two questions. Have you the witness within yourself? Do you know Jesus Christ? Does the Spirit of God bear witness with your spirit that you are the child of God?"
Wesley was surprised and knew not what to answer. Spangenberg observed his embarrassment and asked: "Do you know Jesus Christ?" "I know he is the Saviour of the world," replied Wesley. "True," rejoined the Moravian; "but do you know that he has saved you?" "I hope he has died to save me." Spangenberg added, "Do you know it yourself?" "I do," replied Wesley—but he adds, "I fear they were mere words."[1]
All his life Wesley strove after this simple but profound faith, the child of love, which so marked these Moravian brethren. And at the age of thirty-five it came upon him like an influx from heaven. If God be indeed the Great Father of men, it is impossible that he should not love us, and it might seem impossible that we should not love him. But there is something as yet incomprehensible about it; and the human soul seems to be imprisoned in a "muddy vesture" of low or earthly desires, which in some mystic way must be pierced or broken before the soul or spirit of man can wholly feel the entrance of the Divine Spirit, and can have that full consciousness or knowledge of harmony with God which Wesley and his friends at last secured. I do not attempt here even to touch any theory or fact as to "conversion;" but I suppose there is hardly any, even the most successful worldly man, who does not again and again confess that "all is vanity and vexation of spirit." There is not a man, even a rich one, who would not welcome that divine change, which, inspiring him with a faith and knowledge of the universal and perfect love of God, would enable him to bear all and to do all, in full confidence that it was for the best, because it was the will or wish of the Great Father. If such preaching, to produce such results, would be acceptable and consoling to the rich and prosperous, with what a mighty force might it not be borne in upon the hearts of the poor and wretched, the weak and the afflicted!
It was this doctrine which Wesley preached in the slums of London, in the mines of Cornwall and Newcastle; and it is this which has been preached by all the class-leaders and exhorters and travelling preachers of this Methodist Church ever since; and with wonderful power and effect. Now bear it in mind that to preach this vital truth, it does not require that a man should be a scholar, that he should have studied the whole "Body of Divinity," that he should have read the Bible in the Hebrew or Greek, that he should know the derived meaning of words, that he should have all the graces of rhetoric or elocution on the end of his tongue—not at all; he needs, and he only needs, to have had a vital experimental knowledge of "this change" in his own soul, with a fervent, vehement desire to portray to his friends—to all the world—the blessedness which it has brought to him, and which it will surely bring to them if they will but ask for it, will but open their souls to its all-pervading influx.
Not a church in all England was open to Wesley, not five educated preachers were found to coöperate with him, his converts were poor, and were scattered
- ↑ Stevens's History of Methodism.
