More than 160 years ago a large family of children lived in Lincolnshire. Their father was a clergyman in a little town called Epworth, which you may find on the map, in the north-west part of the county. The clergyman, Mr. Samuel Wesley, lived in an old wooden house, with a thatched roof. It was a small house for so large a family, for there were at one time thirteen children, besides six who had died when they were very young. I cannot tell you all their names, but I know that the eldest boy was called Samuel, and the two younger boys, John and Charles. Then there were all the sisters—Emilia, Sukey, Molly, Hetty, Nancy, Patty, Kezzy (which is short for Kezia), and several others; but there were no boys who lived to grow up but Samuel, John, and Charles. It is about John that I have now to tell you. He was eleven years younger than Samuel, and was born in June, 1703. His mother, who was a clever woman, took great pains to bring up her children with orderly, obedient habits, as far as she knew. She tried also to bring them up in the fear of God. But I must tell you that at that time, the gospel of God was very little known or believed in England. People were generally taught that if they were good, kind, and honest, and did their duty to their neighbors, and perhaps, in addition to this, said their prayers and went to church, they would go to heaven when they died. All over the country it was the same, and as there were no Sunday-schools, and very few day-schools, scarcely any of the poor people had learned to read the Bible for themselves. They therefore only knew what they were taught by ignorant ministers, who did not themselves understand or believe the good news that it is the blood of Christ, and not our own doings, that makes us fit for heaven. It always happens, that people who talk of being saved by their doings, are just the people whose doings are the worst. Thus we find that Abel, who showed by his offerings that he trusted in the blood of Christ, did good works; for so God has told us (I John 3:1212If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? (John 3:12)). Cain, who expected God to be pleased with his doings, was a murderer.
You may wonder how it was that in this Christian country, people were sunk in such darkness and ignorance. It had not always been so. About fifty years before, there were many true ministers of the gospel, and the word of God was carefully taught and faithfully preached. But the two ungodly kings, Charles II and James II, had done all they could to put out the true light. Two thousand godly ministers in the reign of Charles II had been turned out of their homes, forbidden to preach, and imprisoned when they continued to do so. Eighteen thousand of God’s people in Scotland had been put to death, and many more sent to work as slaves in the West Indies. God had spoken by terrible judgments to the wicked King Charles II. It was after his persecutions of God’s people, that the great plague and afterward the great fire of London had happened; and James II was driven from his throne and sent to a foreign land. But the good men who had been preaching God’s word in the time of the Commonwealth, were gone to be with the Lord, and those who had taken their places were ignorant and ungodly. It happened in this way that England, was in the year 1703, a land of darkness. But God in His great mercy had purposes of blessing for this wicked nation, and the little boy, John Wesley, was one day to be sent as a messenger from God to preach the gospel, now almost forgotten, amongst the towns and villages of England. But it was not whilst he was a little boy that he learned the gospel. You may like to know what he was taught when he was a child. For five years he did no lessons at all, but during that time he was taught to be very obedient to his mother’s rules. Even before he was one year old he was taught to cry softly, so as not to disturb people. He was never allowed to eat or drink anything between his meals, unless he was ill, which was a very good rule. He was made to sit quiet at family prayers. As soon as he could speak, his eldest sister had to read to him a psalm and a chapter in the New Testament, every afternoon at five o’clock. I do not think he understood it, but at least it taught him to sit quiet, and to obey. When he was naughty, he was taught to confess his fault, and was not punished if he did so. If he made a promise, he had to keep it. At last five years old came; and then was the first day of lessons. This was, indeed, a day of lessons. Even the day before, everything in the house was put straight and tidy, that the mother might have nothing to do on the great day of lessons, but teach her little John. All the older children had their tasks given them, which they were to do that day by themselves, and they were forbidden to do them in the school-room between nine and twelve, or between two and five. During these six hours Mrs. Wesley had John all by himself, and made him learn the whole alphabet perfectly. All the children had been taught in the same way, but Molly and Nancy had not succeeded in learning the alphabet in one day. It took them a day and a half, for which their mother thought them very stupid, poor little things.
It must have been a long day’s work for the little boy. He must have been very tired when five o’clock came, and his sister must have had hard work to keep him awake, whilst she read the chapter and the psalm on that hot summer’s afternoon. (His birthday was, you remember, in June.)
The next day he had his first reading-lesson. He did not have a little easy book to begin with, as you had at first. He was made to read the first line in the Bible—“In the beginning God created the...” The next day after this he had to read the whole verse. So he went on, till he could read the whole chapter all through. I do not know whether he did the six hours’ lessons every day—I hope not; but I daresay he did quite enough. One of his little sisters, Hetty, whose real name was Mehetabel, could read Greek when she was only seven, and no doubt John did as many lessons as his sisters. But he was a very merry, funny little boy, and had great games of play with his sisters, and made plenty of noise when he was allowed to do so. He had only his sisters to play with, for Samuel was gone to school, and Charles was not born till John was six years old. I must now tell you of a dreadful thing which happened soon after Charles was born.
You remember that the whole country was at this time sunk in ignorance and ungodliness, and the people of Epworth were no better than the rest. They were a rough, rude set of people, who were chiefly employed either in working in the flax and hemp fields which surrounded the town, or in making the flax and hemp into sacking, sail-cloth, ropes, and string. They appear to have led in general very wicked lives. Although Mr. Wesley did not preach the gospel much more clearly than his neighbors, he did speak and preach faithfully to them about their sins. This made them very angry. They had already on one occasion set his house on fire, which was easy to do, as it was made of wood. The fire had been put out before it had done much mischief. The worst was that many of Mr. Wesley’s books were burnt, and books were not so plentiful then as they are now.
One night, when little Charles was fourteen months old, Hetty, who was then twelve, was aroused from her sleep by a piece of burning wood, which fell from the ceiling on her bed, and scorched her feet. At the same time some people in the street called “Fire! Fire!” which awoke Mr. Wesley. He called his wife, and Emilia, and Sukey, and told them to run out of the house, and he then ran to the nursery to call the nurse and the five youngest children. The nurse took little Charles, and called to the other children to follow her. Three of them did so; but little John was sleeping so soundly that he did not awake till they were all gone. When he did awake the nursery was so light that he thought it was morning, and he called to his nurse to take him up. When no answer came he got up and looked all round the room, and saw out of the door the roaring flames, which now were blazing up to the door itself.
Poor little John could not go near the door, so he climbed up on a chest by the window, and began to scream and cry. His father had now found out that John was left behind, and three times he tried to get up the stairs to fetch him; but the staircase came down with a crash, and the poor father then fell on his knees in the hall and asked the Lord to take John to be with Him in heaven, for he felt sure he must be burnt. But whilst he was praying the people in the street saw little John at the window. They had no ladder, but one man said, “I will stand close to the wall, if one of you will get on my shoulders and reach the child.” Another man did so, and little John was brought safely down. His mother and the other children had all got safely out of the house—some by the doors, and some by the windows. Mr. Wesley now called his neighbors together, and knelt down with them in the street, to thank God for having preserved them all from so terrible a death.
John always remembered this dreadful night, and long afterward he had these words written under one of his portraits, “Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?”
Can you find these words in the Bible? John’s mother felt from this time more than ever anxious about his soul, and determined to be more than ever careful in teaching and training him.