AT 8 o’clock, he preached again, and every evening that week, on his father’s tombstone. During the day, he visited the towns and villages round. One day he paid a visit to a neighboring magistrate, before whom a whole wagonload of people had just been brought, because they went to the Methodist preaching’s. “But what is their crime?” asked the magistrate. No answer was given, for the people who brought them had forgotten to settle what they were to be accused of. After a deep silence, one man said, “Why, they pretend to be better than other people; besides which, they pray from morning to night.” “Have they dorm nothing besides?” asked the magistrate. “Yes, sir,” said an old man. “An’t please your worship, they have converted my wife. Till she went among them, she had such a tongue! and now she’s as quiet as a lamb.” “Carry them back,” said the magistrate, “and let them convert all the scolding wives in the town.” Next Sunday, Wesley preached his last sermon in Epworth churchyard. The people stayed for three hours to hear him. It was very hard to part with them, but souls were perishing elsewhere; and now that he seed had been sown, Wesley had to leave hem for a while, and after preaching many times on the road, returned to Bristol. There he stayed till the middle of July, when he was ailed back to London for a sad reason. Old Mrs. Wesley, who had been suffering much for fears in one way and another, was now so much worse, that a message was sent to John to desire aim to come to London at once. He accordingly started from Bristol on Sunday evening, July 18. On Tuesday he writes, “I came to London, and sound my mother on the borders of eternity. But she had no doubt or fear, nor any desire, put (as soon as God should call) to depart and to be with Christ. All her five daughters were with her―Mrs. Harper, Mrs. Ellison, Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Lambert, and Mrs. Hall; or, to...all them by their old Epworth names, Emilia, Sukey, Hetty, Nancy, and Patty.” Since you last heard of Emilia she had, at the age of fifty, married Mr. Harper, an apothecary at Epworth. Charles was not in London, and we have a short account of Mrs. Wesley’s last days in a letter which he received after her death from Nancy. She relates: ― “A few days before my mother died she desired me, if I had strength to bear it, that I would not leave her till death, which God enabled me to do. She labored under great trials, both of soul and body, some days after you left her, but God perfected His work in her above twelve hours before He took her to Himself. She waked out of a slumber, and we, hearing her rejoicing, attended to the words she spake, which were these: ‘My dear Saviour! are you come to help me at my extremity at last?’ From that time she was sweetly, resigned, indeed. The enemy had no more power to hurt her. The remainder of her time was spent in, praise.”
It was on Tuesday, as I told you, that John had arrived. On Friday she seemed to be fast sinking. Her six children sat by her bedside, and sang to her for a time. “After this,” says John, “she continued perfectly sensible, though she could not speak, till near four o’clock. I was then going to drink a dish of tea, being faint and weary, when one called me again to the bedside. It was just four o’clock. She opened her eyes wide, and fixed them upward for a moment. Then the lids dropped, and the soul was set at liberty, without one struggle, or groan, or sigh. We stood around the bed and fulfilled her last request, uttered a little before she lost her speech, ‘Children, as soon as I am released, sing a psalm of praise to God.’”
Mrs. Wesley was buried on the following Sunday week late in the afternoon. Her grave is in the Bunhill Fields burying-ground, near where the Foundry once stood. One who was present at the funeral says, “At the grave there was much grief when Mr. Wesley said, ‘I commit the body of my mother to the earth.’” When the funeral service was over, John preached a sermon over the open grave. The text was, “I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it”―and so on to the end of the following verse, which speaks of the dead being judged out of those things that were written in the books according to their works. It was a strange text to choose for such an occasion, for we know that those verses in Rev. 20. describe, not the first resurrection, when Mrs. Wesley will rise again, but the second resurrection, which is not to happen till Christ has reigned on the earth moo years. In this last resurrection, called by the Lord in John 5 by the terrible name of the resurrection of damnation, the saints of God, instead of standing to be judged, will sit in judgment, in company with Christ, upon those then called out of their graves to receive the awful reward of their ungodly works. If you ask when will be the first resurrection, at which time God’s people will rise from their graves, I can tell you with joy and thankfulness that it may be Tonight―Tomorrow―any day―for it is for that glorious moment we are told to wait, expecting at any hour that the Lord may come. The first thing that He will do on coming down from heaven, will be to call the dead saints out of their graves, “then we which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” If it seems strange to us that John Wesley did not on such an occasion preach about the first resurrection in which his mother should rise again, we should remember that at that time even God’s believing people seem to have been in total ignorance of the blessed truth that at any moment the Lord may come and call away His saints. They seem only to have expected Him to come for judgment after many signs and prophecies should have been fulfilled. They did not understand that He would come and take away His saints before He would come with them to pour out His judgments on the ungodly, as is plainly taught us in 1 Thess. 4:14-17,14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. 15For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. 16For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:14‑17) where it is said that “the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: and that then the living saints shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.” And in 2 Thess. 1:7,7And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, (2 Thessalonians 1:7) we are told that the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven to take vengeance on the ungodly, and that then He shall be glorified in the saints, who, we read in Col. 3 shall appear with Him in glory, and, as it is said in Zechariah, “The Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with Thee.” It is then that those found alive on earth shall be judged by Christ and His saints, and moo years later we read of the judgment of those who have died, Christ and His saints sitting in judgment as before. But these things were overlooked even by God’s people 100 years ago. Neither Wesley, White field, nor any of God’s servants in those days ever gave the blessed message, “The Lord Jesus may come today. We must be looking for Him.” It should not surprise us that so it was. The Lord Jesus foretold in the 25th chapter of Matthew that so it should be. He says, “While the bridegroom tarried, they all (foolish and wise virgins alike) slumbered and slept.” That is, as regards the truth of His coming at any moment, they were all alike asleep. Let us be thankful that we live at the time when the glorious midnight cry has been made, “Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet Him!”
John says, “We set up a plain stone at the head of her grave, and on this stone he wrote the following lines: ―
“In sure and steadfast hope to rise,
And claim her mansion in the skies;
A Christian here her flesh laid down,
The cross exchanging for a crown.
“True daughter of affliction, she,
Inured to pain and misery,
Mourned a long night of griefs and tears,
A legal night of seventy years.
“The Father then revealed His Son,
Him in the broken bread made known,
She knew and felt her sins forgiven,
And found the earnest of her heaven.”
There in the Bunhill Fields burying-ground we may leave Mrs. Wesley, till that day, we hope so soon to come, when she shall be raised it incorruption, and be forever with the Lord.
F. B