JOHN spent about ten weeks in and near Bristol. He then heard that he was wanted in London, and on June 13 he returned there. In London he found his mother, who had come to live there. He had not seen her since he went to say “good-bye” before going to Germany. He now found her very unhappy about his “strange way of thinking.” She said she had read a paper he had written, which proved he had greatly wandered from the faith. This was the very same paper which John had read to her at Salisbury, and which she then said she approved. But it was Samuel’s doing that she now thought it so wrong. John preached next day out of doors at Blackheath to 12,000 or 14,000 people. This was not the first open-air preaching in the neighborhood of London. Whitefield had arrived from Wales a few weeks before; he had preached on a tombstone in Islington churchyard, and, being forbidden to preach in churches any more, he went the next Sunday to Moorfields. Moorfields is now a busy part of London, but was once really a moor, and later, in the time of James 1, had been made into a sort of public park for the people of London. Thus it was in the year 1739. There were rows of trees, straight gravel walks, and large spaces where crowds might assemble. Whitefield had preached there from the top of a wall, as the table which he had at first used for a pulpit was broken in pieces by the mob. There was now constant preaching in and near London, as the Wesleys and Whitefield were all there together. John, too, preached in Moorfields and on Kennington Common.
I must now tell you a story about John’s first preaching in Moorfields. But to begin this story at the beginning we must go back a good many years. One Sunday night in the year 1717, whilst John Wesley was a schoolboy at the Charterhouse, another little John sat listening to his father reading the bible. This other little John, who was then nine years old, was the son of a stonemason of the name of Nelson, at Birstal, in Yorkshire. On that Sunday evening the stonemason was reading aloud the loth chapter of the Revelation. His little boy sat on the ground by the side of his chair. But as the father read on, little John fell with his face on the ground. He did not like it to be seen that he was crying bitterly. The solemn words made him tremble with fear. He tells us, “As my father proceeded I thought I saw everything be read about, though my eyes were shut, and the sight was so terrible I was about to stop my ears, that I might not hear; but I durst not. As soon as I put my fingers in my ears I pulled them back again. When he came to the 11TH verse the words made me cringe, and my flesh seemed to creep on my bones while he read, And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat thereon, from whose face the heavens and the earth fled away, and there was found no place for them. ‘And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of those things that were written in the books, according to their works.’”
Little John felt as though he were one of those guilty sinners, standing there before God. He says, “Oh, what a scene was opened to my mind! It was as if I had seen the Lord Jesus Christ sitting on His throne, with the twelve apostles below Him, and a large book open at His left hand, and, as it were, a bar fixed about ten paces from the throne, to which the children of Adam came up. On one leaf of the book was written the character of the children of God, and on the other the character of those that should not enter into the kingdom of heaven. I thought neither the Lord nor the apostles said anything, but every soul, as he came up to the bar, compared his conscience with the book, and went away to his own place.” The stonemason never knew whilst he was here on earth what was the consequence of his reading that chapter that Sunday evening. What a blessing would it be if the fathers who now spend their Sundays at the public-house, or in reading Sunday newspapers, were to follow the example of the Yorkshire stonemason. From that time John had no more peace or rest in his soul. He became so frightened when he knew he had done wrong that he would hide himself somewhere and cry bitterly. But when he was with his boy companions he would pretend to be merry and happy. “But, oh,” he says, “the hell I found in my mind when I came to be alone again! And what resolutions I made! Nevertheless, when temptations came, my resolutions were as a thread of tow that had touched the fire.”
Once, when he was sixteen, he heard a sermon which kept him from sleeping all night, but after trying a few days to do right he began again to follow the example of older boys, and fell back into all sorts of sin. Just after this his good father died. He said when dying, “I know that my peace is made with God, and He will provide for my wife and children.” John was greatly surprised at his words, wondering how he could know his peace was made with God. But the death of his father had no other effect upon him. He still lived, as he says, in sin and folly, and tried to make himself happy with any pleasure or amusement he could find. Perhaps there are other boys like John, who give themselves up to pleasure, and seem to their companions to be jolly, merry fellows, when at the bottom of their hearts they are utterly miserable. No one knew but John himself that the reason he was so eager for amusement was that he wanted to get rid of the thoughts of the Great White Throne, and of Him who sat thereon. Ungodly as he was, he still prayed from time to time, and when he was nineteen he asked the Lord to give him a suitable wife, and “then,” he said, “I will live to Thy glory.”
Soon after he met with a young woman, who was, he thought, the wife God intended for him. They were married, and she proved a good, affectionate wife. But neither one nor the other loved God, and all John’s promises and resolutions were again broken. He gave himself up to pleasure as before. “Yet,” he says, “many times, when I had been shooting a whole day, and had killed a good many creatures, I was quite unhappy, and ready to break my gun in pieces, resolving never to shoot nor hunt anymore.” John at last became so restless and miserable, he thought he would go away to a distance, and see if he could turn over a new leaf when he was away from his old companions. He did not at first take his wife with him, because he wanted to go from place to place to see where he could get work enough to make it worthwhile to settle there. He found he could get plenty of work in London, and there he tried to live a steady life, and began to read the bible and pray. But his fellow-workmen cursed and abused him because he would not drink with them nor spend his money as they did. He bore a good deal very patiently; but at last they took away his tools, and said, if he did not drink with them, he should not work whilst they were drinking. This was too much for poor John. He forgot all his good resolutions to be patient and meek, and gave them a good thrashing. It was sad that all his “best endeavors” should thus have ended with black eyes and bruises. But so it was.
John Nelson, like John Wesley, had been trying what he could make out of the dry stick, and those who do so are doomed to disappointment. John knew that he had thoroughly broken down in his attempts to be good, and he left off reading and prayer almost entirely. He had by this time saved up, ₤12 15s., and with this large sum he returned to his wife in Yorkshire. But he still felt so restless and unhappy, he could not settle down there. He told his wife that he would go back to London, and that she must follow him in the stage-wagon. This she did, and they lived in London some years. But poor Martha Nelson missed the fresh air of the Yorkshire moors, and became at last so weak and ill that John told her to take the two children and go back to her friends in the country, and he said he would follow her soon. This he did. But he again felt as though he could not stay in Yorkshire. He could not rest night or day. At last he said, “Martha, I must go back to London for I have something to learn I have not yet learned.” What this was he scarcely knew, but he thought if he could but find out what it was that would make him happy, his troubles would be over. He says, “I was as a man in a barren wilderness that could find no way out. I said to myself; ‘What can I desire that I have not? I enjoy as good health as any man can do; I have as agreeable a wife as I can wish for; I am clothed as well as I can desire; I have at present more gold and silver than I have need of: yet still I keep wandering from one part of the kingdom to another seeking rest, and cannot find it. Oh! that I had been a cow or a sheep!’ I looked back to see how I had spent above thirty years, and thought rather than live thirty years more so I would choose strangling. But when I considered that, after such a troublesome life, I must give an account before God of the deeds done in the body, I cried out, ‘Oh, that I had never been born!’ for I feared my day of grace was over, because I had made so many resolutions and broken them all.”
Poor John had no one to help him. He went back alone to London for the third time. Sometimes he wandered out in the fields when his work was done, thinking whether there were any way by which he could possibly be saved. Sometimes he went from church to church in the hope of learning it there. At St. Paul’s Cathedral he heard a sermon about people doing their duty to God and their neighbor. The preacher said. “What joy will such people have on their deathbed by looking back to their well-spent life!”
Poor John then looked back at his life to see if he could get any comfort out of that. “But, alas!” he said, “I could not see one day in all my life wherein I had not left undone something which I ought to have done, and done many wrong things besides, and I saw that I was so far from having a well-spent life to reflect upon, that even if one day well spent would save my soul, I must be damned forever.”
This sermon, as you may think, made him far more miserable than he was before. Then in another church he heard the preacher say that man could not keep God’s law perfectly, but God required him to do all he could, and Christ would make out the rest. But unless man did all he could he must perish, far he had no right to expect salvation from Christ unless he had done his part. “Then,” thought John, “it is quite clear that not only I, but every one, must be damned, for I am quite sure no one has ever done all he could.” He now thought he would try no more churches, but would go to dissenting chapels. But there he got no help either. Then he tried Roman Catholic churches, still to no purpose. Then he went to the Quakers. But all was in vain! Nothing remained but to try the Jews; but this he thought would be quite hopeless, and so he began again with going to church, and continued to do so till the spring, when George Whitefield came from Wales, and began to preach in Moorfields.
F. B.