MEMOIR OF THE REV. CHARLES WESLEY. 243 1828. Charles and Samuel were eminently distinguished by musical genius and talents, the former died May 23, 1834; the latter October 11, 1837. Charles and Sarah were never married. Samuel left several children, who are now living. Charles Wesley, like his brother John, was considerably below the middle stature. He was short-sighted and abrupt in his manners, but without the slightest approach to affectation. There was in him a simplicity, a generous frankness, and a warmth of affection which endeared him to all who were able to appreciate sterling worth. His mind was naturally inclined to view things in rather a gloomy and discouraging aspect, and was perhaps never thoroughly divested of the mysticism which in early life he imbibed from William Law. But his heart burned with love to Christ, and breathed the most fervent benevolence towards those who were strangers to his blood. His intercourse with persons of rank, who sought his acquaintance, was frequent, but never abused. He asked for no worldly preferment. He coveted no man's silver, or gold, or apparel. He affected not the delicacy of rich men's tables. He lowered not the dignity of the ministerial character, by flattering the great, conniving at their vices, softening the truth of God, or assuming an effeminacy of manners. He declared plainly that he was a stranger and a pilgrim on the earth. The calm and triumphant manner in which he often saw his spiritual children die in the Lord, filled him with humility, thankfulness, and joy, and led him to desire immediately to follow them to the mansions above. His affection as a husband and a father was strong and tender. His friendship was warm, open, and sincere. With his numerous acquaintances and their families he deeply sympathised in all their joys and sorrows. The intimacy that subsisted between him and his brother John was close, confidential, and inviolable. They entertained precisely the same views of religion, but differed on some questions affecting the Established Church. Charles's High-Church principles led him strongly to oppose the general administration of the Sacraments in the Methodist chapels. He was the child of feeling, John of intellect. He felt he could not take charge of the societies: he well knew that government was not his forte. He had no aptitude for controlling and harmonising the discordant spirits of men. For the maintenance of discipline in difficult cases, his faculties and habits were not at all suited. His uprightness and kindness of heart were never disputed, but his impetuosity created prejudice: he, therefore, thought it best to retire and leave the societies to John, whose talents for government were of the highest order. But though after travelling for fifteen years he became nearly stationary, his union with the Methodists remained to the end of his life. He refused a living of £500 a-year. A man of loftier and purer patriotism and loyalty never existed. He composed several admirable hymns for his country and his king. His attainments as a scholar were highly respectable. With the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and French languages he was well acquainted, and he had sone knowledge of the Arabic. Classical and Biblical literature he cultivated to the end of his life. He was an excellent critic, and possessed a fine taste in composition. As a preacher he was mighty in the Scriptures, and poured forth the most important truths with the utmost simplicity, force, and brevity. His sermons were generally extempore, and were the effusions of the heart, rather than the offspring of the intellect. They were awakening and effective, forcing conviction on the hearers in spite of opposition. His bowels yearned over souls, tears flowed down his cheeks, and at times he would be overpowered with feelings of mingled reverence and joy. The anointing of the Holy One rested upon him in its plenitude. Salvation was his favourite theme. John writes to him thus: "Oh! insist everywhere on full redemption, receivable now by faith alone; consequently, to be looked for now. You are made, as it were, for this very thing. Just here you are in your element. In connection I beat you; but in strong, short, pointed sentences, you beat me." On one occasion, when describing the Antinomians in his preaching, a person vociferated, "You lie." "Ha!" said he, "have I drawn out leviathan with a hook?” He was remarkably prompt in reply. He once met at the Hot-wells, near Bristol, Dr. Robinson, Primate of Ireland, who had been his fellow-collegian. The Archbishop, who seemed glad to see him, observed, "Mr. Wesley, you must be sensible that I have heard many things of you and your brother, but I have not believed them; I knew you better. But one thing has always surprised me, your employing laymen." Wesley: "It is your fault, my lord." Archbishop: "My fault, Mr. Wesley?" Wesley: Wesley: "Yes, my lord; yours and your brethren's." Archbishop: "How so, sir?" Wesley: "Why, you hold your peace, and the stones cry out." Archbishop: "Well, but I am told they are unlearned men?" Wesley: "Some of them are in many respects unlearned: so the dumb ass rebukes the prophet." His Grace immediately turned the conversation. But Charles Wesley was the Poet of Methodism. His thoughts flowed in numbers, and his deep feelings of joy, confidence, and zeal could find no adequate expression but in poetry. In that eldest species of poetry, the Hymn, a song of adoration to God,-he stands unrivalled. The classic purity of his taste, and the commanding energy of that kind of inspiration which was proper to his genius, could never have been satisfied with other than the most thoroughly distinct, harmonious, and eloquent diction. His wonderful facility of versification is manifest in the variety of his metres, of which there are no less than twenty-six in the Wesleyan collection; yet a rough, inharmonious line in any of his compositions can scarcely be met with. Every line has a corresponding rhyme. Those hymns which have no unison of sound at the termination of the first and third lines, were not written by our poet. Nor do we find in his hymns any feeble expletives, vulgar abbreviations, luscious epithets, bombastical expressions, or confused metaphors. His style is ever chaste, terse, and vigorous, and, at the same time, remarkably simple and plain. He possessed wit, bright and piercing, but he seldom employed it. His hymns were not the productions of an opulent and lively imagination, gazing on the rich, variegated, and exuberant beauties of nature, nor were they the fruits of hard mental toil. They were the irrepressible effusions of a heart panting after God, melting with pity for a world lying in the Wicked One, and joyfully anticipating an ascent to the vision beatific. They display deep pathos, remarkable energy and daring, and great beauty and sublimity. The excellent Dr. Watts did not scruple to say, that that single poem, "Wrestling Jacob," was worth all the verses he himself had written. Charles Wesley composed many of his hymns. while travelling from place to place, and encountering opposition in all its forms of calumny, menace, and violence; others he wrote while his children were in the room and visitors talking around him. Henry Moore says: "Not infrequently has he come to our house in City-road, and, having left pony in the garden in front, he would enter, crying out, 'Pen and ink! pen and ink! These being supplied, he wrote the hymn he had been composing." his But what is infinitely more important than the spirit of poetry, is the spirit of piety. This, in all its depth, fervour, richness, and true evangelical character, breathes through his hymns. On the love of God and the atonement by the death of Christ he delighted to dwell. Christian experience furnished him with inexhaustible themes. John Fletcher said, “One of the greatest blessings that God has bestowed upon the Methodists, next to the Bible, is their Collection of Hymns." Of the seven hundred and seventy hymns, in the Collection now in use, six hundred and twenty-three were written by Charles Wesley. He also published Hymns on the Lord's Supper; Hymns of Petition and Thanksgiving for the Promise of the Father; a Collection of Psalms and Hymns; Hymns for Times of Trouble and Persecution; Hymns and Sacred Poems; Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures; Hymns for the Use of Families; Hymns suited to the Festivals, to Funeral Occasions, to the Use of Children, to Preparation for Death. Perhaps no man ever wrote so many hymns. Those which he published would fill about ten 12mo volumes; and what he left unpublished would occupy ten more. Believing them to be, for soundness of theology, strength of thought, and beauty of expression, incomparable, we trust the time is not very distant when the public will be favoured with a cheap and uniform edition of all the Poetical Works of this great Hymnologist. We have several of Charles Wesley's original and very characteristic letters, with which we shall probably, at some future time, gratify our readers. We close this account with the following Epitaph, inscribed upon a tablet in the City-road Chapel : "God buries his workmen, but carries on his work." REV. Sacred to the memory CHARLES WESLEY, M.A., educated at Westminster School, and sometime student at Christ Church, Oxford. and pious without ostentation; to the sincere, diffident Christian, but to the vain-boaster, the hypocrite, and the profane, a son of thunder. and, uniting with his brother, the Rev. John Wesley, in the plan of Itinerant Preaching, endured hardships, persecution, and disgrace, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ; contributing largely by the usefulness of his labours to the As a Christian Poet he stood unrivalled; and his Hymns will convey instruction and consolation to the faithful in Christ Jesus, as long as the English language is understood. and died the 29th of March, 1788, a firm and pious believer in the doctrines of the Gospel, and a sincere JOURNAL OF MRS. SUSANNA WESLEY. EVENING.-Our blessed Lord reproves Martha's care, because it cumbered and perplexed her mind. She erred not in caring for a decent reception of her Saviour, but in being too anxious and solicitous about it, inso much that she was not at liberty to attend on his instruction as her sister did. It requires great freedom of mind to follow and attend on Jesus with a pure heart; ever prepared and disposed to observe his example, and obey his precepts. To manage the common affairs of life, so as not to misemploy or neglect the improvement of our talents; to be industrious, without covetousness; diligent, without anxiety; to be as exact in each punctilio of action as if success depended upon it, and yet so resigned as to leave all events to God, still attributing the praise of every good work to him; in a word, to be accurate in the common offices of life, yet at the same time to use the world as though we used it not, requires a consummate prudence, great purity, great separation from the world, much liberty, and a firm and stedfast faith in the Lord Jesus. EVENING.-Here comes in the failures, and defects in the measures and degrees of duty, if these can properly be called sins; I say, if they can, for I do not see that this is a good argument. We are bound to the highest degree of love by that law, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart; therefore, whatever falls short of the highest and most absolute degree of love, is sin; for at this rate, whatever were short of perfection were sin. We must love nothing better, nor equal to God; this will constitute us in a state of sincerity. What is further required is, that we are bound to aim at and pursue the highest degrees of love, but we are not bound under pain of damnation to attain them. But, on the other hand, I readily grant, that our falling short in the degrees of faith, hope, love, and the like, may properly be reckoned sins, when they spring from defects of vigilance and industry; and if such defects be such as can consist with sincerity, then, and then only, are the imperfections of our virtues pardonable. EVENING. Certainly, says Dr. L., it were better that all the world should call me fool, knave, or villain, than that I should call myself so, and know it to be true. He goes on my peace and happiness depends on my own opinion of myself, not that of others. It is the inward sentiments I have of myself that raise or deject me; and my mind can no more be pleased with any sensation but its own, than the body can be gratified by the relishes of another palate. He here speaks like a wise and a good man, like one that hath a just dominion over his own passions; and it is what in reason every man ought to be able to say as well as he. But I believe, upon an impartial survey, there will be very few to be found, but what are so much in the power of the world, that, as Mr. Pascal observes, they are not satisfied with that life they possess in themselves, in their own proper being, but are fond of leading an imaginary life in the idea of others; and it is hence they are so eager and forward of showing themselves to the world. We labour, says he, indefatigably to retain, improve, and adorn this fictitious being, while we stupidly neglect the true; and if we be masters of any noble endowment of tranquillity, generosity, or fidelity of mind, we press with all our vigour to make them known, that we may transfer and engraft these excellencies on that phantastic existence. Contend not with men's interests, prejudices, or passions, when it can innocently be avoided, for these are things that rarely admit of a calm dispute. Every man ought to be so far a lover of himself as to prefer the peace and tranquillity of his own mind before that of others; and, though we should do all we can to make others happy, yet, if any be so obstinately bent to follow those ways that lead to misery that they are not to be reduced, leave them to the mercy of God. EVENING. I distinguish between inordinate and natural affections. By inordinate, I mean the tendencies of the soul towards that which is unlawful. By natural, its propension to the body with which it is invested, the desire of its health and ease, and the conveniences and necessaries of life for this end. Now, when religion enjoins repugnances to the former appetites, the obedience of the perfect man has no reluctancy in it; but when it requires things, as sometimes it occasionally does, which thwart and cross the latter, here the obedience of Christ himself was not exempt from conflict. Though good men have preached temperance, chastity, charity, and other virtues of this kind, with ease and pleasure, yet nature has shrunk and startled at persecution and martyrdom. MORNING. The nature of sin is founded in subversion of the dignity, and defacing the beauty, of human nature; and that it consists in the darkness of the understanding, the depravity of the affections, and impotence of the will. If the strength of sin did not consist in the disorder and impotence of all the powers of the soul, whence is it that the sinner acts as he does? Is it not evident that his understanding is infatuated, when he lives as if he were wholly body? as if he had no soul but such as results from, and dissolves with, its temperament and contexture? one designed to no higher purpose than to contrive, minister to, and partake in, its sensual pleasures? All are not equally stupid; but even in those in whom are some sparks of understanding and conscience, how are the weak desires of virtue baffled and overpowered by their much stronger passions for the body and the world. NOON. In the hatred and abhorrence of sin, as sin, as it is contrary to the purity of the Divine nature and laws, consists the very essence of true repentance. That it weakens the powers and defaces the beauty of human nature; that it is attended with such mischievous consequences in this world and the next, are excellent reasons for that hatred and abhorrence; but they are not the foundation of true penitence-for that derives its origin from a just sense of Almighty God, our dependence on, and duty towards, him as our creator, redeemer, and sanctifier. EVENING.-What is it to have a just sense of Almighty God as he is distinguished into three subsistencies; namely, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Indeed I cannot tell. After so many years inquiry, so long reading, and so much thinking, his boundless essence appears more inexplicable, the perfection of his glory more bright and inaccessible. The farther I search, the less I discover; and I seem now more ignorant than when I first began to know something of him. But if true penitence is founded on a just notion or sense of God, and you cannot tell what it is to have a just sense of him, how can you know when you are truly penitent? It is impossible to speak of God without impropriety, or to think of him without ecstacy. The subject is too vast, the matter too important. His sublimity transcends all thought; words cannot express what is so far above their nature; therefore, the simplest and plainest are the best. There is more significancy in that awful name by which he condescended to manifest himself to the Iraelites, "I am," than can be comprehended or expressed by any or all the words that are comprised in all the languages on earth. When I say I cannot tell what it is to have a just sense or notion of God, my meaning, therefore, is, that I cannot do him the justice I would. I cannot attain to an adequate notion of him; but, as when we apply ourselves to the study of any part of physics, though we cannot so far penetrate into the nature of things as to be able to discover or define their proper substances, but must content ourselves with what knowledge we can gain of their accidents and properties,-so, when we apply ourselves most diligently and sincerely to know God, though we cannot, by the utmost force and energy of all our powers, attain to the proper knowledge of his essence, his essential glory, wherein all perfections concentre, or rather are all but one perfection, yet we may discover what he is pleased to call his back parts; that is, the emanations of his essential glory, or the manifestations it hath made, or maketh of itself, in the exercise of his Divine perfections. In the creation of the world, the redemption and regeneration of the human nature, the government of the world, particularly in respect to mankind-which last, as Bishop Beveridge observes, shows forth the glory of God à posteriori, by its effects and consequences, although à priori-we can see nothing of it. MORNING. It is impossible to form right apprehensions of God by the dim light of nature, which that merciful being knowing, as also that the happiness of man could not be secured without his knowing God aright, he hath condescended to reveal that to man which his own reason was too weak to discover. It is to this revelation we owe all the just and true ideas we have of him who dwelleth in inaccessible light, unto which no man can approach. It is this that directeth us to search and find him as he is, by and in Jesus Christ, in whom dwelleth the fulness of the Godhead bodily. To know him only as a man, as a reasonable creature, -to know there is a supreme, just, wise, almighty Being that superintends the thoughts, words, and actions of all |